


Jupiter's Storm

by orphan_account



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Depression, Illnesses, M/M, POV First Person, i'm really proud of it idk
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-15
Updated: 2016-10-12
Packaged: 2018-06-08 15:31:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 35,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6860845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil probably should have died a long time ago. </p>
<p>(Or: the one where Phil is sick and Dan is Death.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> i should probably mention that this fic will deal with a lot of death (i mean). 
> 
> but specifically, phil has cystic fibrosis, if that's personally triggering to anyone. also, as mentioned in the tags, there is implied depression that will become more explicit as the story progresses. 
> 
> enjoy! :)

I know I'm going to die.

It's not so sad, is it? Whether it happens on the stiff hospital bed I am immovably bound to at the moment or sixty years from now in my own home, peacefully and in my sleep, I am going to die.

"There's a fifty percent chance you'll die, Phillip."  
  
Nope. There's a one-hundred percent chance I'll die. There's a fifty percent chance I'll die from _this_ treatment in particular. In fact, added to the fact that I'm already fifty-percent dead, I make a damn fine guinea pig for new tests in medical advancement. Freeing up some space in the hospital, you know?

Clinical trials on the sick are always a tricky business, but also completely the sicks' decision. I made my decision. They didn't stop me.

When I wake up on The Day, I'm greeted by light flooding in through the swaying curtains of the too-large window on the left wall of my hospital room. I should be used to it by now, but I still let out a half-hearted groan and turn to the other side.

No fuzzy television reception is buzzing in my ears, though, so Mum must have stepped out for a few hours. It could be the afternoon. I don't know. I don't care.

The remote isn't too far away. If I found the strength to reach all the way to six inches, I could watch an educational cartoon for four-year-old early risers or that soap opera Mum and I make fun of. The home renovation show I secretly like doesn't come on until three, and I don't think it's that late yet. I hope it's not that late.

My arm stretches out in front of me, appearing like a ghost's, to the nightstand where I left it last night after I stayed up late because _The Princess Bride_ was on. I turn my arm in the light before picking it up. I nearly forget how truly frail and thin I am, but I always have these reminders.

The channel that played the movie last night is now playing a rerun of a show I don't know, and it doesn't look interesting, so I flick to a news channel to get the time. 10:10. Not bad. I go into surgery around five.

As I mindlessly go through the channels on the tiny telly that's way too far up the wall, my mother walks in, a coffee and a hash brown in her hand.

"Hi," I say.

"Good morning," she smiles.

"That looks good."

"Oh. Do you feel like anything this morning?" she asks, gesturing somewhat guiltily to the hash brown. I don't mind. Quite frankly, I'm just as sick of hospital food as she is. Except I've rarely had an appetite these past few weeks. It wasn't so much as not wanting to eat as it was not wanting to get sick later and end up with it regurgitated in puke-form on my lap and my white, white bed sheets.

"No," I say, abandoning the telly and thumbing through the health magazine that I found by my bedside. Would it kill hospitals to stock some trashy tabloids? I don't want to get tips on good workout routines, thanks; I'm too weak to even walk half the time, let alone run two miles before the sun comes up. I may have tolerated it before, but now it's just becoming insulting. "Actually, could you get me some water? My throat's dry."

She literally hops up from the floral chair she'd just taken a seat in. "Of course. Any food?"

I hate this. Contrary to what I thought when I was younger, I actually don't like having someone at my beck and call, especially my own mother. I like privacy and doing things by myself (that last bit even more so now), but I always feel like a burden when someone does something for me just because I'm ill.

"Well, this magazine says lots of protein will give me abs." I sarcastically flex a weak, pale arm in the air, receiving nothing but the sight of my own tremoring bones sticking out of my thin, paper-like skin.

"Don't joke," my mother says seriously, but her eyes are light. Damn it. I can't get scolded for _anything_ nowadays. "A pancake?"

"Sure," I give in easily.

"You probably should eat, after all. You might be weak after today." Her voice changes, a tinge of unhappiness coming through and settling on her face.

She wasn't happy when I agreed to let some hopeful doctor potentially kill me. We don't share the same philosophy on my life. There might not be a miracle cure in my lifetime. Someday there will be. But if I can help that and maybe speed things up a little, well, it's not like I'm very significant to the cause any other way, right?

"Mum, I'm already looking at a possible lung transplant. You have to get used to me going into surgery," I try and reason.

"This is different, Phil. This is... this is a gamble with your life."

I understand. I do. I really, really do.

"Did you know," I say quietly, "I mean, I read somewhere and I don't know how reliable it is, but only a third of patients with a lung transplant live after ten years of getting it?" She glares at me. "I didn't check and see if it's completely true. Just."

"What's your point?" she asks, her voice trying to remain gentle and even.

"I'm always gambling with my life, Mum."

I have better days, better weeks, better months. I can fool myself and my family sometimes. But the fact of the matter is I'm not getting any better. This will be for the rest of my life.

She sighs and slumps into the chair by my bedside, fingers laced together and her body hunched over. She looks defeated. Tired. I hate it.

"What will they be doing to you in there?" She's not changing the subject, per se, but it's a different mood. It sounds curious, just a regular question she'd ask, like _what do you want to drink, Phil?_

I shrug. "Something with my lungs. I don't know. I don't try to understand the revolutionary as it's happening."

"Well, I know it's your lungs. I was here when they explained it. I guess what I'm trying to ask is what made you so quick to agree."

And we're back into somber mode. Phil's strange, death-wishing mind and how to understand it 101. I meet with a psychologist and a separate support group when I can, and they can't seem to get it, either. It's not that complex. I just have trouble explaining it.

"Fifty percent chance of me living and getting better. The glass is half full."

"And what if it's empty?" she persists.

Well, I'll be asleep thanks to anesthesia, but the question is for her. She's been solely dedicated to me since I was born. What if I was gone?

I'm quiet before I say, "Then they'll know what doesn't work. One more step forward."

She stares at me, long and concerned. Then she stands up, kisses my forehead, and says, "How about breakfast?"

I smile. "Sounds good."

My mother walks out of the room and I continue to read about how to lose thirty pounds in thirty days on a special diet.

xxx

"And you're certain this is okay, Mr. Lester?"

"I signed the paper," I smile.

I drift from consciousness as the anesthesia sets in, the thought only crossing my mind then that it might be the last time I ever close my eyes.

xxx

Now, at this point, I'm used to being woken in the middle of the night by nurses and doctors "discreetly" checking my vitals or my medicine or my IV, but rarely do they purposely try to wake me up. It's happened before, but not recently.

My eyes adjust to the dark as they flutter open and threaten to shut again several times, disguising itself as long, drawn out blinks. Someone is alarmingly close to my bedside, right near my face, their arms resting crossed a mere shift away from my cheek. Not many people have opted to get that close to me lately. I'm not contagious, I'm not contagious, I'm not contagious. If I could get it tattooed on my forehead, I would.

I am simply an upsetting sight you don't want to get too close to because just watching from afar is somehow enough.

Turning only upsets the fresh scar on my chest where they cut me open and did God knows what a few hours ago, and I wince as I face the person at my bedside.

For a moment, I expect my mother, but she's not there. She wouldn't have left. She was hyperventilating when they were wheeling me out to my fifty-fifty-life-or-death gamble. But I'm in my room. I woke up in my room and went back to sleep, not thinking much of it. Now I'm awake again and thinking of nothing but it.

He's young, whoever he is, too young to be a doctor. He could be one of those eternal youths and be a nurse, but he's dressed normally. I make out a t-shirt and jeans in all black. Dark brown eyes and soft brown hair. Two dimples, one deeper than the other, as a result of his smile.

"Are you Philip?" There's nothing I would count as professional about his voice. He smiles into his words, and it sounds like how someone who's known me all my life would.

"Phil," I answer automatically as I always do.

"Right. Hang on."

I expect him to leave for a second or at least do _something,_ but he just spaces out and closes in on his mind, eyes closed and a thoughtful crease forming in between his eyebrows. I imagine him going into his brain like a home and sifting through all the parts, looking for an answer he can't find.

There's something about him. It could be off-putting, and it could be welcoming. However it is, I can't help but view him carefully, confused in the face of this seemingly celestial being. This is just weird.  
  
The guy snaps out of his daze and greets my eyes with a flash of a smile. He takes my hand and wraps his fingers around mine. My hand remains limp in his grasp, and I just stare, mouth refusing to cooperate with my thoughts.  
  
"You'll have to forgive me," he says quietly, softly. He's looking at me through his eyelashes and giving me that smile again. "I don't usually take a form this young and pretty—or, well, human—so I'm trying to make this as soothing as possible. I don't think it's working. Am I comforting like this?"

I tepidly pull my hand back. "Well, I'd rather you not do that after five seconds of meeting me, so."

He shrugs and pushes his pointy fringe to the side, caring for it like a fresh haircut he's proud of. "Suit yourself."

"Who even _are_ you?"

"Well, I guess now would be the time to introduce myself," he says, perking up on his knees and looking like he was to prepare a handshake and a formal introduction with his full name, maybe even a middle initial (I wouldn't put it past him). But he sinks back down and rests his cheek on his hand, glancing up at the ceiling. "I think I like the name Daniel, don't you?"

I don't know what to think. The curious drawl of his voice as he says it leads me to believe he actually doesn't know his name and isn't trying to make one up because he's secretly a criminal mastermind.

"Daniel is fine," I say slowly.

"Dan," he cuts in before I can finish the final word, his eyes darting back to me, a playful smile tugging at his lips.

"What?"

"Call me Dan, even though my name is Daniel."

I blink at him before frowning. "Are you mocking me?"

Dan (allegedly) finds this hilarious and commences his own laugh fest, like an inside joke I'm not in on. "Short answer: yes. Humans are so ridiculous sometimes. Well, _most_ of the time. _Sometimes_ would be too nice."

"Humans—" I begin to form with my mouth to ask him what the hell he was if not human, incredulous and utterly confused, but Dan cuts me off.  


"So what is it that you have, exactly?"

I falter as I try to keep up with this scatterbrained, ditzy, strange... living thing.

"Uh, well, I was born with cystic fibrosis, and recently I've been having respiratory complications. They just tried something new on me, but I don't feel that different," I recount. It only hits me after I that I haven't had to tell anyone that in a long time. I sit up with some effort, keeping my back pressed against my pillow. "Hang on, shouldn't you know that? Being a... nurse? Or whatever you are."

Dan flattens a hand against his chest. "Oh, I'm not a nurse. I don't work here."

"Then why are you h—no, how did you even get _in?_ "

He curves his lips into a resplendent smile that reaches his warm eyes, and okay, that doesn't _seem_ like the face of a serial killer, but I'm not falling for it just yet. "Shortly, I think, you'll realize I can get into anywhere I want," his voice and eyes strangely serious, but quickly exchanged for his personal brightness. "Sometimes by accident, even! Why did I choose here when I could be anywhere else? I don't know!"

"So you could be a murderer," I state. I'm not even angry. Disappointed, actually. A proper murderer wouldn't prey on someone who's already close to death.

Dan cackles possibly the loudest, highest-pitched giggle I have ever heard emit from a man/possible teenager/possible demon/possible mirage brought upon by the medicine. "Not quite. But that was super funny, you don't even know. Or maybe you do, and you're just fucking with me. Do you know? Are you just fucking with me?"

I start to get short of breath and decide that I really shouldn't be dealing with this at this time of night. Morning. Whatever. At all is more sufficient.

"Look, I just. I really want to sleep. So can you do whatever you need to do and then get out? Thanks."

He rests his cheek on his hand, the skin pushing up near his eye, and uses the other hand to trace a pattern along the mattress. "I'm not sure what to do with you," he says. Yeah, same. You, me, the population of England. "It would be cruel if I just did it out of nowhere because you still think I'm some kind of weird doctor."

I sigh, elongated and dramatic, and slam down on the bed, covering my eyes with my hands in exasperation with almost enough melodrama to distract me from the pain that shoots across my chest from the impact. "What, exactly, do you need to do?"

"Okay. Well. I don't want to say _kill_ you _—_ " I bounce back up, the blanket resting at my lap and my eyes wide. It's not like I can get very far, but I'm willing to at least try and fight for my life. Then again, that's all I do. Just keep fighting, Phil. Keep on, keep on, keep on. As if it's that easy. "—oh, my God, stop being dramatic. _I'm_ not going to kill you, this mysterious new treatment of yours is. God, I thought the cute dimples would lead people off the murderer track. Did you know that a man tried to throw a hammer at me once when I told him? Went right through me, of course, but still. Am I not cute enough to be a harmless helping hand to lead you through this difficult time in your life?"

My mind races to quickly for me to form any coherent conclusion to be made about this. He speaks quickly already, so when he dumps all of this on me at once, well.

"I'm still confused," I say.

"Oh, you're such a precious thing," he tsks, false pity bleeding through profusely on purpose, taunting me. Dan creeps his upper body across the hospital bed, leaning in close to my ear, his voice sending chills up my spine. "I am Death."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> would phil even be allowed to participate in a totally fucked up clinical trial that’s already unrealistic in itself, being a seventeen-year-old boy with serious health issues already? probably not. i've taken a liberty here, and i'm wary of it myself, but i'm also really pumped for this story, so.
> 
> you can read this on wattpad, if you like (hint: no one does): https://www.wattpad.com/story/72056175


	2. two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahh, it’s a day later than i said, which is why i don’t really like to put specific days on things, and even so i think this chapter is kind of eh. 
> 
> i’m officially on break for the summer, though, and the reason this is late is because one: my school likes to hold off on finals until the last fucking week of school, and two: i had some scheduling panic for next year after it was totally fucked up, which is now resolved asfdgdfjkjgd anyway

It's probably for the best I don't tell anyone about the dream I had last night. Maybe it would be funny if I explained how death personified came to my mind as some kind of neo-Tumblr boy in skinny jeans bearing matching black earrings instead of a scythe. Maybe it would be concerning. I'm not taking the chance.

A new magazine has been added to my growing collection of diet tips and weight-lifting regimes. This time, it's a parenting magazine. A smiling woman holds her baby on the cover and pays me no attention. I wonder how they even find those babies. And what must the babies think? They're dressed up, handed to a stranger who gazes lovingly upon them for a few seconds, and then get handed right back.

Fun, easy snack tips; ten tips on how to get your newborn to sleep; and Halloween crafts advertise around her. It's January. It takes three seconds of research to find that it was actually published in 2012, so I can't even complain about it not being seasonally appropriate. It's just inappropriate as a whole.

_Gee, Jim, where should this baby magazine go?_

_Golly, Bob, how about the cystic fibrosis kid? He'll_ never _have kids of his own!_

Come on.

I flip through begrudgingly, stopping every so often to stubbornly fawn over some of the stupid outfits they put these babies in. It's impossible to tell, but if I had a baby of my own one day, maybe I would dress them like this. _If_ I had a baby.

 _If_ I did, which I wouldn't, couldn't, and, considering I find puppy ear coats and bow ties endearing, shouldn't.

I'm infertile and gay, so having a child who is biologically mine was never a concern; there's always adoption. Just me and my baby, maybe a husband, and we'll all live happily together, eating dinner at the same time at the dinner table and laughing and smiling. Idealistically, it sounds perfect.

Realistically, reality swooping down and snatching my theoretical baby from me like a hungry, ugly bird and pushing my theoretical husband off a cliff, it's a situation built to self-destruct.

I was designed to never have someone that reliant on me, to never have someone love me that much. My mother is an exception, I suppose, but she knows what will come. We all do. The truth no one wants to face is I might not even make it to thirty. How the hell am I supposed to let a baby grow that close to me and then be suddenly ripped from their life in a way they wouldn't understand?

Even if I gave them all the love in the world, in the end, I would only ruin them.

I rub at my eyes when I hear voices approaching closer and someone opening the door. I've been checked on a nauseating amount of times after I almost died yesterday due to "complications" in the surgery. I don't remember a thing of it.

What I remember is Death—uh, Dan in my room. Claiming to be death. Blatantly telling me that the surgery was going to kill me.

Still a dream, though.

Premonition? No, it happened after. Drug-induced vision? Likely. Actual, imminent death? Not so much.

The nurse walks in smiling. He says what he needs to say and does what he needs to do; I don't hear much of it. I only pay attention to his name and learn his face. This one must be new—I'm not even on a first-name basis with him.

"Are you still having chest pains?" he asks me.

"Only when I move." Or breathe. Or be awake. Or... exist. Is it a bad idea to lie about something like that? Yeah. Is there going to be a follow-up question that will somehow justify my actions? No.

He gives me a painkiller and a look when I'm too eager to wash it down with an immediate swig of water. "On a scale of one to ten..."

I drown the rest out. Such a stupid question, really. My ten is different from your ten, and your ten is different from your cousin's ten, and theirs from their dog, and so on.

"Maybe a seven," I answer regardless. It's an adequate answer by my standards. My pain tolerance evolves with flexibility every year to the point where I can have a pain in July and think to myself, _Wow, the Phil from last May wouldn't have been able to stand this._

The Phil from last January would be in tears right now.

"Well, you can't take another for another six hours."

I suppress my groan and nod peacefully, deciding that there's literally no reason for me to give a new nurse trouble. That, and he could technically kill me and get away with it if he does it right. I'm weak, I'm in a vulnerable position.

I'm perfectly set up to be killed. Perfectly set up for death.

"Yeah, I know," I tell him, having heard it all before. I can recite the full medical names of every medication I take, every knock-off, every name brand. Medicine is a key part in my life.

"If you need it, just ask for a nurse." His dark eyes remind me of Dan's. Dumb. I've seen plenty of brown eyes in my life. Dan certainly isn't the first. Or is he? He's been around since... since the beginning of time, right?

He has an eternity of knowledge, yet he talks like me. An eternity of experience, yet he still didn't know basic social skills. An eternity of beauty, yet he chose to be a normal teenage boy. An endless amount of possibilities, and he chose to come to me.

I would rather _not_ think about what it must be like to live that long, thank you very much. If the conditioning I received from movies and books are any inclination, immortality is chock full of loneliness and sorrow, which in itself did not seem right for Dan.

A boy—man, creature, _thing_ —like that doesn't deserve it. He's different, I guess, in the sense that he doesn't have to go through the normal immortality angst. Watching your loved ones die around you and the like. But he lives in this world and he knows who we are. It must count for something to see us die.

And yet his eyes still shone.

The door shuts behind the nurse as he leaves.

"Hi, Philly."

I flinch when his voice startles me, managing to hit my head against the weak headboard because, well, me. He's looming over my bed again, plopping down to a crouch and resting his crossed arms on my bed and smiling at me, clearly unaware of the headache I now have.

"Jesus Christ," I squeak.

"Not quite," he quips, anticipating a response, maybe it's the line he pulls on all the pretty boys who are slowly dying in hospitals who aren't very pretty at all. I don't laugh. Did I not escape him last night? Maybe _I'm_ the immortal one now and the only catch is that I have to hang around this guy for the rest of eternity.

At least he waited until I was alone. If he had been in here, God knows what conclusions that nurse would have jumped to. I already gave him pill-addict vibes, it seems, so a cheeky visit from the boyfriend, alone in my sex-depraved state, despite, you know, nearly dying, would have only helped matters.

He traces a finger along my sheets. "Sooo... How are you feeling?"

"I almost died," I remind him.

Dan holds up a finger. "But you didn't," he says. "I'm still here, see." He waves his arm in the general direction of me, a collection of clunky and thin black bracelets varying in style jingling and shaking.

I sigh heavily. There should be a change in my mood when he's present, I feel, like I should feel worse. Give me some warning. Make me embrace it. Make me want it. "Are you going to kill me _now_?"

His eyes light up as if he'd been hoping I'd ask that. I brace myself. "No, actually. I'm only here to talk to you about that." He leans in close to me, his brown eyes inches from mine. I lose myself in them for a moment, transfixed by how new they look. Mine must look more haunted than his do, which either says something about him or something about me.

They're not the eyes of someone who's seen the beginning of this world and will see the end.

His voice comes quiet and proud. "I did a thing."

"What."

He springs back up on his knees and holds his hands up for a second, a smile emerging on his soft features. "Okay, so listen. I was supposed to kill you last night, right? That was the plan. But I thought, 'fuck it, let's not,' so I didn't." I open my mouth to object, to ask him why the hell he would fuck with time and space like that, but he ignores me. "I wanted to see what would happen. And you're still here! It's a miracle, truly."

I struggle to form any coherent thoughts beyond what creative death awaits me after cheating death. If _Final Destination_ taught me anything, it's that there is no escaping death. And that special effects can actually somehow get _worse_ than the early 2000s _._

"You... _experimented_ on me."

Dan's eyes travel to the side, an eyebrow raising. "You literally let a group of doctors experiment on you. That's kind of what got you in this mess in the first place."

"Oh, my God, Dan," I say, not bothering to hide my outrage.

He looks confused. "Why are you angry? I saved you."

"Maybe—"

"Please spare me the _maybe I don't want to be saved_ bullshit. _Please._ " Now he sounds agitated. I must be making a mistake here, angering Death himself, but I don't actually care right now. Death fucked me over.

"You don't know what I was going to say," I shout, sounding stubborn and becoming embarrassed at how young and stupid I sound. Especially how that stupidity must be even more maximized to him. "You had no right to do that."

"You're right. I had no right to break the rules for only you and let you live a little longer because I didn't want you to die from some stupid doctor's mistake."

I scoff. "Plenty of people die from stupid doctor's mistakes. Where are they? Yes, right. Dead."

"You don't get it," he persists, his eyes pleading. Pleading for what? For me to understand?

I cover my eyes and lay back down.

"Phil?" he asks with concern at my shaking body.

I slowly remove my hands, still laughing. He's looking at me like I'm insane. I might be, in hindsight.

"Oh, my God," I wheeze in with my laughter. I haven't laughed like this in a long time. Most of the time I will launch into a coughing fit, so I gave up trying to laugh.

Dan frowns. "What are you laughing at?"

"I'm arguing with the fucking Grim Reaper, that's what. It's ridiculous."

The corner of his lip begins to betray him, lifting rebelliously despite him trying to hold it down. My eyes lock with his as my laughter subsides, a smile still in place that he eventually mirrors.

Faintly, very faintly, he brushes my hair to the side. I can't remember a touch like that since I was a little boy, having a bad day with the potential to die in my sleep, and my mother sitting by my bed, looking upon me sadly.

He nudges me gently, almost so lightly I don't feel it. At least he's cautious of my state, I'll give him that much. "Move over. Just a little bit. That's it. Good. Right there," he says softly.

I'm pressed up against the railing when he dives over and lies down next to me. For Death, he's pretty warm.

"What are you doing?" I ask, still amused.

He only looks at me. "Is this the first time I've seen you smile? I feel like it is."

"You've known me two days and tried to kill me on the first."

"Fair enough," Dan shrugs, knocking into my arm. "Sorry."

"I don't think it was made for two people," I say, then as an afterthought, "Wait, do you weigh anything? Or is it just... ghost matter... or whatever?"

"Well, I could go into my translucent mode, but you might literally go inside me. And not the fun way. Kidding. Jesus, I take people's souls for a living, I don't know manners, stop giving me that look."

I shake my head and try to pretend like that didn't happen. "Didn't you say last night that a hammer went through you or something? Why aren't I? Is that your 'translucent mode?'"

"Yeah, it's this thing I can do. I can choose to be permeable. God, that's such an ugly word. Permeable. Sounds even worse when you're talking about yourself, doesn't it? I guess it's better than _penetrable._ I'm not using _that_ to describe me."

I smile. "Says the guy who made a sex innuendo two seconds ago."

Giggling, he begins to say something, but winces and places his fingertips on his temple.

"Do you have a headache?"

"I don't experience pain, what do you think I am?" he asks, clearly in pain.

I watch warily, an eyebrow raised. "I'm pretty sure you have a headache."

He manages a smile. "Maybe it's from being around you so much," he says in attempt to ease my worries, but I'm just as confused as he is. Dan heaves a sigh when he catches the look on my face. "Look, I'm fine. A headache never killed anyone. Well. I mean. Nevermind. Besides, I don't think I can die. That's kind of the point."

I've played enough video games to have an idea of what's going on here. This is some kind of omen to warn us that Dan is doing something horribly wrong. It didn't take one to let me know, honestly. But I get the feeling, for whatever reason, he's not going to kill me, even if I ask.

So we wait.

And we see what happens.

See if the apocalypse starts.

"I'm just worried—"

We both sit up at the sound of heels clicking down the hall near us.

"Better be on the safe side," Dan says near my ear.

"What—"

He disappears just as the door opens and my mother walks in. Her smile falters as she takes in my strange posture on the bed. I flash a tight _no, Mum, everything is totally normal_ smile and try to play it cool.

"Why are you way over there?"

"No idea."

His eyes still shone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> maybe i should add right here that i have nothing against _Final Destination 5_. but did you _see_ that movie?


	3. three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> idk if you noticed, but my user has changed from teencroft to flowerchildmycroft because reasons.

He doesn’t scare me the next day.

I’m ready for his eager, “Hey, Phil,” and throw it right back at him with an unconcerned, “Hi, Dan.”

Dan looks surprised if not a bit disappointed he didn’t get me that time. He ambles over to the window, latches his finger onto one of the blinds, and looks into the city to the best of his abilities with what the window will provide for him.

It’s not much of a view. If I recall correctly, it overlooks several tall office buildings full of uninteresting people working themselves into a grave, a faux-retro diner that honestly isn’t even trying but I recognize because I went there once, and a clothes shop for babies and children.

I’m sure all the views are the same in the hospital. I’m seeing the same repetitive tediousness as Janice on the third floor with the bad hip. No need to complain. But to Dan, it must be different. He sees new worlds every day, can go anywhere whenever he wants. Him seeing the same buildings and the same plodding people everyday must be one of his circles of hell.

“There’s a man,” he says, I think to occupy the space in the room, “who works in that building, the fucking CEO, who’s going to die tomorrow. Heart attack.”

“Can you look at anyone and see when they’re going to die?”

“Yes,” he answers, and it only sparks my curiosity more. What does he see when he looks at me? Does the expiration date keep saying today and he keeps refusing? But amid all my curiosity, I manage to forget about Mr. CEO.

Dan probably can’t tell me if he has a wife and children, but I can be left to my own guesses. I imagine he must have been planning for retirement, and all the kids are away at university or making grandchildren, and they’ll never know that a seventeen-year-old boy who never met him before knew before any of them did. I knew before he did. And it feels wrong.

I feel like I’m letting him die. If there was something I could do, perhaps I would, but this is life. Or rather, the end of it. It will happen to all of us eventually, even me. Someday.

“What’s his name?” I ask.

“Cashill. Ronald Cashill. He’s fifty-six.”

“What do you think he’s doing right now?”

Dan lifts his finger and lets the blind snap shut. He leans against the wall and shoves his hands into the pockets of the tight leather jacket I haven’t seen him wear until today. “Worrying about quotas or whatever businessmen do. Anything but thinking about death, I assume.”

I stretch my hands above my head and feel my body relax. “Do you think it’s better like that?”

“You know, apart from ‘hi, Dan,’ everything you’ve said to me today have been questions,” he smiles. I tilt my head and look at him expectantly. He sighs. “Yes? I guess so? I don’t know. I’m on the other side of it all. I’ve never been in their place.”

“I think it’s better to not expect it,” I admit. “If you know you’re going to die the next day, you wouldn’t do anything. And yeah, everyone says they would, I don’t know, go out and have sex with their crush or whatever if they had twenty-four hours to live, but I don’t think I would. I wouldn’t have that energy.”

Dan comes and sits on the edge of my bed, carefully avoiding my legs that are stealthily hidden under an overly thick white blanket they insist I need at all times. “I’m sure you would.”

I guess I wouldn’t know. The longer I know him, the more I feel I have a lot longer than twenty-four hours to live.

“I would have the energy to have sex? Thank you for believing in me.”

He playfully pushes my calf and rolls his eyes. “Oh, so you can make sex jokes, but I can’t?”

“You started it,” I laugh.

My eyes follow Dan’s and my train of thought tries to match his, as well, as he becomes distracted by the phone sitting on the nightstand beside him. He leans over and skillfully nabs it as if he were a spy in a past life. Or not. Certain similes don’t work for him.

“Dan—”

“These things,” he says, shaking it by his head and ignoring my objection, “are amazing. Seriously. I’ve wanted one for years.”

“Who’s stopping you from getting one?” I ask impatiently, the semi-polite way of saying: _Put my phone the fuck down, asshole._

He shrugs, twirling it in his hands and seeming to admire every detail. My phone is well looked after, I guess. It mostly sits there and collects dust when I’m having one of my hospital vacations, but it isn’t like I have very many people to text when I’m home.

I’ve been told by nurses that my case isn’t very me. Mum says it’s just right. I think it’s the color that puts people off. It is rather bright. As a child, I loved all colors. Wore them all, drew with them all, and the like.

Dan clicks the phone on.

The screen reflects off of him, the galaxy wallpaper visible in his dark eyes. Literal stars in his eyes. It’s light enough in the room so that it doesn’t completely blind him, but it still brightens his face a bit.

“If someone showed me this phone, I would say it’s the phone of a happy person,” he notes.

I can’t respond to that.

“Would you be correct?” I ask instead.

“Would I?”

We make eye contact, the stars disappearing as the screen goes black once again, the light fading from his features. He has to use whatever the muted sun will give him on this cloudy, grey day. The sun might even fail to reach me, make under my eyes look even darker, make my cheeks look more hollow, make my eyes emptier.

Am I a happy person?

“What do you think?”

“I think… that isn’t a question for me to answer,” he answers honestly, sincerity in his voice.

He leaves it up to me, then. To be happy, in my opinion, is a multitude of things. There are unspoken requirements to being happy that some people have a better grip on than others. Not all requirements have to be met, and the requirements vary among the individual. Just like how we categorize our pain on a scale of one to ten.

So am I happy?

Who knows?

Who cares?

Happiness, to me, is a prevailing thing. I know it when I feel it. And yeah, I can look back and think, _that thing two weeks ago made me happy because that guy thought my shirt was cool,_ but there are specific things I can’t place, instances where I’m just happy, and there isn’t an explanation, no need for an explanation.

Dan makes me happy, I think.

He’s one of those situations where there is no explanation. I’m not usually like that with people. I can pinpoint things about them. _She makes me happy because she’s funny. He makes me happy because he never mentions my illness. Those people make me happy because they’ve never knocked books out of my hands and pushed me down._

But Dan, he’s… he’s different.

I’m altogether happy to be around him. Nothing I’ve seen so far about him makes me unhappy, pretty much. Even with all his quirks, I’m slowly finding them to be more endearing than weird.

Dan makes me happy.

Except when the bastard is on my phone.

“You don’t even have it locked?”

“I didn’t think anyone would try and get in it.” I make a point to burn my gaze into him, but he just giggles.

I don’t have anything particularly incriminating on my phone. I’m a compulsive search-history clearer, and even if I wasn’t, Dan’s seen the worst of it, I’m sure. Someone, somewhere has died either with porn playing, porn pulled up on their computer, or even while actually having sex. There’s no way he would be shocked by anything on there.

“This hospital does have WiFi, right?”

“I’d be begging you to put me out of my misery if it didn’t,” I tell him, trying to peek around his shoulder and see what he’s doing.

He looks giddy, a smile attaching itself to his face with no intention of leaving. “I still find that amazing, WiFi. Technology as a whole, actually. It’s so fascinating.”

When I hear him talk like this, I can’t decide if it feels like I’m hearing it from a mesmerized eighty-year-old or a wide-eyed five-year-old. I tell him this, and he responds, “Well, I guess eighty-year-old would be more accurate. I’m literally older than _clothing_. That’s a thing.”

Dan wasn’t _Dan_ until he met me, which I get, but still. Him just… running around naked. Killing stuff. Chilling with dinosaurs.

“What did you look like when that was going on?” I ask. Get that image out of my head. Dan’s a fucking shape-shifter. He could have looked like my grandmother.

“Nothing, really,” he admits quietly. “I, uh, tend to… get... attached… to my human personas.”

Of course. I think of all he’s been, all the different lives he’s lived, all the lovers. Lovers. They’re long dead, aren’t they?

“So it doesn’t happen very often?”

“Before Dan, the last time I took a human form was 1922.” He smiles at me. Then looks away and avoids looking at me anymore. “So no. It doesn’t happen often.”

The mood takes a turn. Dan grows quieter and quieter, the lights flicker (I don’t mention that), and he puts the phone down and stares absently into his lap, flexing his fingers just to be doing something.

“I’ve said something wrong, haven’t I?” I say sheepishly.

“No, n—”

“Or I’ve brought up something you don’t want to talk about and you’re uncomfortable—”

“Phil. No. It’s a touchy subject, yes, and I’m not ready to talk about it, but it’s okay. I just… haven’t thought about h—it in a long time.”

I don’t push. Or, at least, I don’t push any more than I already have. I refuse to let my wander around the topic, too, in hopes that maybe if I just don’t think about it, we won’t ever have to broach the subject again.

We will, though, I know. Whenever he’s ready. Not really an _if_ about it. My fear is that he’ll tell me when he’s not ready.

Dan demands a smile from his mouth, whose kind, reassuring intent is counteracted by the sadness in his eyes. It was the inevitable sadness I knew was coming one day or another. No one can be happy all the time. Eventually, you just break.

He’s not broken, not yet. And if he can make it this long without breaking, maybe he’s got an actual shot unlike the rest of us.

And he’s on my phone again, so maybe his mood’s already improved.

“Let’s go somewhere,” he says out of nowhere.

“What?” I ask, alarmed. I don’t mean to rain on his parade, but I can’t actually move from the hospital bed due to the fresh wound on my chest that almost killed me. Then there’s the chronic illness thing on top of that.

He takes my hand and brushes off my concern like it’s nothing, like he has this whole thing worked out. Yeah, he can prevent me from dying, but what’s he going to do when my mother or a doctor walks into my room and I’ve disappeared off to have lunch with Death himself?

“Well, I’ve been meaning to try this thing, if you’ll let me,” he explains. The vagueness alone should be enough to elicit a rejection from me, but as always, I’m intrigued.

When the fear of death is gone, I want to try everything.

“What is it?” I ask.

His face shifts into that boyish excitement he gets before he explains something. Everything is still so exciting to him. I would have been over it after about forty years, if even. I imagine myself going to God or whoever is in charge of him and saying, _Yeah, this whole thing is cool and all, but when do_ I _get to die?_

Add that to the list of Things I Will Not Be Sharing With My Therapist.

“So I’ve seen near-death experiences happen, and I know how it works by now, but I’m particularly fascinated by the out-of-body experiences. I wanted to see if I could, you know, let you leave your body for a while.”

“Y-you still haven’t even told me where we’re going.”

He holds up my phone. “I searched for good places to eat, but even the best in this area is reviewed as _overpriced and mediocre_ —me, to be honest—so I was thinking that shitty diner outside there. It’s not too far away. I don’t want to push it this first time. If you’re even okay with it at all, that is.”

Honestly, what do I have to lose? Lots, I’m sure, but this is a cute boy (who’s also literally death, which is beside the point) asking me to eat frozen french fries and a questionably lumpy milkshake. Opportunities like this aren’t exactly cropping up everywhere for guys like me.

“I mean, we can try, yeah. _Tell me, princess, now when did you last let your heart decide_ and all that.”

Dan looks uncomfortable. “Is… is that a reference to something? I’m not as hip as I know I seem.”

I giggle. “Just show me a whole new world, Dan.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know this is shorter and purely transitional, but it's because I ended up splitting this chapter into two because it would have been too long otherwise. Actual Plot Stuff™ will happen next chapter.
> 
> speaking of the next chapter, it might (probably) be late, soo.


	4. four

Purposely trying to have a near-death experience is a lot harder than having it happen naturally.

We’ve been at it for about an hour now. My mother has popped in, a doctor has checked me, and I’m still in my body. Maybe it’s the universe warning us that we shouldn’t be doing this, but when have we ever listened to the universe?

“Should we call it quits already?” Dan asks, sprawled out across the foot of my bed. His leather jacket is thrown over a chair, and he looks relaxed in his soft grey t-shirt, his hand draped over my ankle.

I take a careful sip of the water Mum brought me a few minutes ago. Surprisingly, I’m getting better. The doctors are calling it a miraculously fast recovery. I’m calling it Dan. How did you heal so quickly, Phil? Oh, you know. Dan.

“I’ll leave that up to you,” I say.

“It’s your body.”

“It’s your Death power.”

He lazily stretches out like a cat and climbs nearly on top of me to lie down in front of me, facing me. “We can always go somewhere when you’re discharged. Your lungs have been doing well, I’ve noticed.”  
  
I turn to my side with some effort, eventually becoming comfortable looking into his eyes. His breath smells like the fruity gum he’s become addicted to that he keep stealing from me. “They’re never doing well, for one thing,” I correct him. “They’ve improved since I came here, but I was literally drowning from the inside then.”

“Drowning from the inside,” he echoes. “That’s the most metal thing I’ve ever heard. You’re a fucking badass.”

“I am very metal, Dan, don’t you forget it. Everyone fears me. I am terrifying.”

A smile settles into his features and lingers like it’s going to be there forever. Dan grasps my elbow gently, running his thumb over my skin with an incredibly light touch. There’s a dreamy look about his eyes that I suppose is even worse on me. I’m still unsure if Dan is a master at subduing his emotions. You would think his emotions would either run rampant or be nonexistent, but they’re average.

The one average thing about him is what confuses me the most.

Obviously I can’t just blurt out _What do you think of me, Dan?_ It’s what’s on my mind. Of course it’s what’s on my mind. He must think something of me if I’m still alive. We’re friends now, but before. That first night, when I was dying and he was mocking my nickname preferences. What did he feel? What did he see?

Who did he see?

Dan is forward. If he’s feeling something, surely he would let me know. He isn’t the type to sit and let people talk without giving his own opinion. So if there was something there, I would know. I fascinated him. I was a lucky choice out of millions that night for his personal experiment.

There are a thousand explanations for why he did what he did, but none of which are probably what I want to hear.

But he’s here, isn’t he? I’m not in danger of dying anymore. He could go. But he stays. This is an uncomfortable hospital that gets too hot at night and too cold during the day, a hospital where screams and sobs ring out in the hallways and you know right then and there that Mr. Watkins didn’t make it, a hospital where sick little boys become sick teenage boys with a preoccupation with death that was there before he met the man himself.

“Dan,” I say softly. My eyelids are becoming heavier. It’s dark outside now. So he won’t be taking me anywhere today. Fine. I’m getting better; I’ll be home soon enough, and he’ll still be around then. He will.

“What?” he whispers, still stroking my skin and allowing me of all people to smell him and hear him and feel him. It’s so surreal.

“Why was it me?”

A silence falls on us. A shield comes and covers the emotion from his eyes, making it impossible to guess what he was going to say to me, if he was going to say anything at all. It’d be so easy to just tell me to go to sleep, Phil, smile at me, then disappear. If I wanted to keep my reasons to myself, it would be what I would do.

“It… it had to be,” he explains softly, without explaining anything at all.

I sigh dramatically and roll over onto my back. Dan’s hand falls limply in the space between us. I miss the feeling already, but I can’t just… ask him to touch me. “But what does that mean? Thousands of people are just like me. Even more have _been_ like me, and you’ve seen them all. I’m ordinary.”

The shield returns, this time blocking out all emotion from his face period. It’s haunting, in a way. In a word. He doesn’t even look like a person when he does it. More like a doll. A creepy porcelain doll that could be used in a horror movie. I become uneasy and shift around restlessly as I await his belated and hesitant response.

“You’re not ordinary, Phil. I’m not saying you’re the only person to ever act like you or… sound like you or… or… look like you.” He stops and pushes his slightly damp hair back, scraping it back from his forehead while taking deep, surreptitious breaths. Okay, maybe I exaggerated earlier. It does get hot at night, but he should be used to it, surely. I’m not sweating.

“You all right?”

He manages a smile. A weak, not entirely true smile at that, but a smile nonetheless. “Yeah. It’s hot in here, isn’t it? Anyway, what I was saying. You, uh, you aren’t the first ever Phil I’ve known, but I like you. I guess that’s one way of putting it. I’m not good with words. At least not like this.”

I nod. “That’s okay. Neither am I,” I say, in attempts to fix the mood. I turn back to him, resting my head on my folded arm and watching his stomach rise and fall as his breaths even out.

“Can I ask you to do something? You can say no.”

“What is it?”

For a while, I think he’s not going to answer me. Just leave it out there and pretend it never happened. I personally don’t think Death should be afraid to ask anyone anything. Using fear, he could get anyone to do anything he wants.

Then again, I’m not afraid of him.

“Will you… will you hold me? And like, not ask any questions about it?”

I guess that time of not asking questions starts now. And I don’t want to ask to confirm that, either, so I go with it.

Dan’s curled in on himself, looking impossibly small, so small that I think to myself, _This can’t possibly be the thing responsible for everything anyone’s ever lost._ His hands are balled up near his chest and his chin is tilted down, as if looking at me somehow added to the embarrassment that apparently existed.

Slowly, I wrap my hands around his shoulders, not really knowing what to do with my body. Movies make holding someone look so easy. It’s not. It’s really not. For one thing, you can’t know what your hands feel like to the other person. A voice rings out in my head, feeling like it was a million years ago. _Am I comforting like this?_

You wanna know the one thing that makes hugging even more awkward? When the person isn’t hugging you back. Dan burrows his face deep into my shoulder and nuzzles against my exposed skin, but his arms aren’t around me. It’s not that I don’t want to hold him—I do, I really, really do—but I’m not used to this.

We stay this way for a while. No words, no shifts in movement. Just breaths and heartbeats. Well, my heartbeat. I’m only slightly unsettled when I realize Dan doesn’t have one.

And then he’s up. And he’s fine.

He’s smiling, a broad, authentic smile that reaches his eyes. Dan sits up and pushes his fringe back in place, like that never happened at all. I blink at nothing, pretending to adjust my eyes to the darkness when it already happened hours ago. Somehow, I feel used. It’s a nasty feeling that chips away slowly at my stomach as I process what happened.

I don’t like confrontation. I can’t express an emotion that dramatic without feeling stupid and awkward, and I can’t tell people off. I’m great at it in my head, of course. Or, you know, in my head hours, sometimes days, afterwards, but still.

It’s easier for me to berate some asshole than it is to tell a friend hey, _that wasn’t cool, I don’t agree with that._ It’s primary school advice 101, yet I still can’t bring myself to do it, in fear that I’ll push the wrong person away or lose a friend forever. Or anger Death. That’s a problem, too.

“I promised you lunch, didn’t I?” he says.

“I wasn’t hungry anyway,” I mumble, wishing I was wearing jeans so I could find a thread to pick at or something. That’s what people do in situations like this, right?

I’m in sweatpants and a jumper with the sleeves pushed up, no shoes, only socks, and they don’t even match. It’s hospital fashion standards. I have to be able to sleep in it, because fuck changing clothes, I’m dying here, but I still have to be able to walk down the hallway without blinding an elder.

He dismisses me with a hand. “Yes, you are. Come on.”

“The diner’s closed by now,” I mention. Laws may not apply to Death, and maybe not even to a transcendental version of myself, but I’d like to keep it to where the illusion is still in place that this is a normal situation, that this is a normal friendship with normal expectations and I am a normal boy who has every right to still be alive.

“Well, after all that, we have to go somewhere.” Dan jerks his head in the general direction of nowhere. “Let’s find somewhere to be.”

“I’m fine here,” I say, then sigh. “Listen, I’m tired. I’m going to sleep now, okay?”

I must sound too snappish, as that seems to be the only way Dan can understand body language. But he seems just puzzled.

“What’s wrong?” he frowns.

“Nothing,” I say. Fucking nothing, you asshole.

Dan sits up and swings his legs over the edge of the bed, tracing the floor with his toes, looking like a puppy who got sent to the doghouse. Fuck him.

“What did I do wrong?” he asks.

I sit up and support myself on my forearms. “Okay. God. Just. You can’t do things—things like _that_ , okay? I mean, you can, but you can’t just push the other person aside after you’re done and act like it never happened. It’s—ugh, just. It’s not good.”

And that is the most I’ve defended myself in the past year. Which is pathetic.

He’s looking at me with those big brown eyes and shakes his head. “I-I still don’t really see what went wrong.”

I press my palms against my forehead and groan. My face feels like I’ve been outside on a summer’s day for too long, no doubt red as hell (literally). It’s not a cute blush like they romanticize, either, not a pretty pink tint to the apples of my cheeks and the tips of my ears. Everything is red and hot and embarrassing.

“Don’t make me say it, please. Oh, my God. I… _That._ What you just did. How you—you brushed me off like that.”

He narrows his eyes and pulls his eyebrows in like he’s trying to understand, but he _can’t_. I can’t be angry. I can’t expect him to fall head over heels in love with me, either. I can’t even expect him to fall in love with, say, this boy at school I know, with his muscles and tanned skin and gorgeous smile. So not me. Definitely not me.

Dan isn’t human.

“Okay. So what I’m understanding is that you feel used?”

“Yes,” I half-whisper. My throat is burning, and I’m not in denial or stupid; I know what it means and I’m not risking it. I lift my knees and link my hands in between them, squeezing the skin white and digging my nails in deep enough to where I have to remind myself not to make myself bleed.

Dan looks concerned. “Are you going to cry?” he asks, and I feel my heartbeat surround my entire body and I squeeze my eyes shut with all the force I have. It’s taking all I have not to cry, so I opt to bury my head in my thighs. He already knows I’m upset. Let him.

A warmth spreads over my back and the ridges of my spine. I know he’s rubbing my back. His hand is still surprisingly delicate, his fingertips brushing against me like a feather. Well, he’s better at this than I was, at least.

He shifts closer to me, and our hips are pressed against each other’s in one swift movement. “I’m sorry,” he says softly.

I sniff, deciding it isn’t safe to lift my head now. There’s a dampness on the side of my hand that warns me against it. “It’s okay.”

“Hey, I won’t ask you any more questions.” I can detect a weak smile in his words. I sniff again, a more rattly one this time. “Aw,” he breathes and leans his head against my hunched-over shoulder.

He won’t ask questions, but he knows. Dan’s been here long enough to sense these things in people. God, I must look so pitiful to him.

It’s the equivalent to a five-year-old girl with an _adorable_ crush on her sixteen-year-old sister’s boyfriend. The trope has been used in movies and TV shows plenty times before. They might not notice at first, but they eventually do, and it’s always so super cute.

Yeah. Real fucking cute.

Dan kisses my hair, and I can’t bring myself to react other than biting my lip until I taste blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it’s late asfdgfjdkgjdk i’ll do better. i had trouble with this chapter bc it changed approximately 59534060469459465434 times and i still really fucking hate it (the first chunk, at least), but there’s a big setting change starting next chapter, though, which is chill.


	5. five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there’s a single instance of homophobic language in this chapter!

The scent of home that greets me is a bittersweet thing.

In one corner, I’m not smelling death. Not Death-death. Dan smells fine. Smelling death as in the deterioration of human life. And I’m not just talking about Mrs. Mullins who’s dying of lung cancer. She’s got a family, doesn’t she? They visit her all the time. How will things change when she’s gone?

When I’m gone, I don’t anticipate there to be any surprise. There will be sadness, yeah, I can accept that, but the shock should not last. People should be able to carry on without me. I’ve known death for this long; he’ll make it slow and he’ll make it comfortable.

Back in the real world, we returned from Christmas holiday a week ago, but luckily I made it to the end of the year so I didn’t miss _that_ much. Except for three tests, a new chapter in maths, and a book project, but hey. I’ve seen worse. I can’t really complain when they offer to give me a break and I refuse every time.

Treat me like I’m normal. Because I am.

“PJ said to text him, so don’t forget,” my mother reminds me.

“Yeah,” I say. I unload my messenger bag of clothes and Necessary Phil Things carelessly onto the couch I haven’t laid down on in weeks. “I’ll get around to it, I mean. Right now, I just want to go and lie down face-first on my bed, inhale those past Phil fumes.”

She laughs, setting her purse down in the cluttered kitchen. Mum hates clutter and messes, but we can’t help it when I get bad and the house seems to follow my lead. It’ll be spotless come tomorrow. She’ll make me help, I know.

“What about school? When do you want to go back?”

I frown. “Is that my call? I thought it was Dr. Wheeler’s.”

“Well, she said you can probably start back on Monday, but if you don’t feel well then, we can hold off for a few days.”

“Eh,” I say. “What day is it today?”

“Thursday.”

Wincing, I say, “I don’t know where I’ll be on make-up work by Monday.”

“But if you miss more days, you’ll just have more work,” she reminds me.

I just can’t win. School, man. It’s something else.

“Yeah. Okay. I’ll go Monday.”

“But you feel all right to go? It’s just the work you’re worried about?”

“Yeah,” I say, my voice suddenly thick. Fucking hate school. But I really do feel fine, so there’s nothing stopping me. Don’t get me wrong, being constantly sick sucks, and I don’t want to be in that hospital forever, but that transition. _From Hello, Philip, what would you like for lunch?_ to _Get out of the way, faggot,_ as if school chicken is really that good.

Hospital food is just as gross, honestly, but at least I can eat alone and not surrounded by yelling, yelling, yelling, unnecessary yelling. Christ, your friend is sitting right there in front of you, you’re making my headache worse. I don’t say that, of course, not out loud.

At school, my intention is to be treated like I’m normal, like my illness doesn’t matter. In some ways, I get that wish. In the worst ways. In the ways I actually want to achieve this goal, I’m still little Phil Lester with the cystic fibrosis. Watch out, guys, he might spontaneously die in the middle of the lecture.

“And you’ve still got your… what do you call it?” 

“My vigilante inhaler?”

She rolls her eyes. “That’d be it.”

Sorry, but if I suddenly can’t breathe, I’m not walking all the way down to that nurse’s office, where they literally already hate me. I carry it around with me, carefully hidden away in my bag.

“It’s in there.”

I don’t get to use Vigi that often. If I can’t breathe, usually administration will freak out, call my mom, my doctor, possibly the Royal Air Force and the United Nations.

And then there’s a crash upstairs.

We both look up, alarmed for different reasons.

“What was that?” she asks no one.

“Uh, probably nothing. My room is just like, _ahh, oh, my God, he’s actually home_ , and fell out of a chair. Quite impressive, really. I’m actually going up there now. You know, to sleep. I’m tired. Okay. Night.”

I dart up the stairs, abandoning my bag on the couch. If she asks questions, I’ll just tell her that I don’t need anything in it. _Yeah, Mum, I don’t need my toothbrush, phone charger, or jacket._

Navigating through the hallway comes naturally to me, like a path in a dream I’ve had many times before. I’m reacquainting myself with these rooms like an old lover. Mine is at the end of the hallway in what would be a dead end if not for my door opening. My bedroom is a memorial. Bright colors and decor like a boy’s, countless flowers decorating the desk, candles burning through the night.

To anyone else, it seems vibrant and cheerful, the room of a happy person. Everyone I know seems put off by it, as if it truly is that morbid.

The first thing I notice is that it doesn’t smell quite right. It smells like a room no one’s been in for a while. I inhale as dust particles whiz around my head, visible in the artificial light given by my ceiling fan. The second thing is Dan lying on the floor, in front of my bed.

I stand in front of him, my hands on my hips, smiling. “What did you do?” I ask.

He doesn’t seem interested in getting up anytime soon. If anything, he seems like he’s waiting for someone to lie there with him. “I fell out of that chair.” Dan points to an unharmed desk chair that swaying innocently back and forth.

“My mum asked what that sound was,” I laugh.

“It was my _body_ crashing to the _floor_. With all my hopes and dreams.”

I sit down on the edge on my bed, trying to get a feel of it again. God, it’s so weird and soft and comfortable. Dan has at least sat up now, but his long legs remain stretched out in front of him. “Can’t you make all your hopes and dreams come true? What’s the point of having them?”

“Woah, that was emo, Phil,” he notes. I start to object, but he says, “Maybe my dream is that Phil won’t have stupid, rejecting chairs.”

“Okay, so you _can’t_ make all your dreams come true.”

There’s a textbook on the desk in front of me, topped off with loads of work and work and work. I find that looking at it makes me actually nauseated, so I lie down and stare at the ceiling fan spin, my hands interlaced on my stomach.

Dan creeps up and peeks over my mattress, looking behind him impassively. “What’s all that shit?” he asks.

“Homework.”

“You have to do homework while you’re in the hospital?”

“Yeah, sometimes. I like to stay on top of things. Sometimes I even work ahead of the class because I never know when I’ll have to miss.”

He whistles lowly. “I would not be like that in school, okay? Can we just get that straight?”

“Oh, please, school would be so easy for you, you already know everything.”

Dan lifts a finger and climbs up onto the bed. “No way, not necessarily. See, I don’t know what all these fucking teenagers are doing today other than be in hospitals, so there’s a disadvantage. Two, I am a procrastinator. And three, teachers would _hate_ me.”

I smirk. “Well, I don’t know what teenagers are doing besides being in hospitals, either, and I’m doing just fine.”

“Do you have a lot of friends at school?”

I sigh, closing my eyes. “This is going to get emo again.”

“That’s okay, just explain it to me. Be as emo as you want. I’ll start you out: when you were… a young boy…”

I cover my face with a pillow. “My father took me into the city to kick your ass.”

He laughs. “That didn’t even make sense.”

“I don’t care. And no, okay? I’ve got a couple friends, but none of them go to my school.”

“Ooo, is that what this is?” He hops up and points to a picture hanging on my wall.

“Oh,” I smile. “That?”

I don’t have many photos, so I can recognize the splotchy Polaroid frame as Chris’ hipster bullshit that we love anyway. I know there are three boys in that picture in front of the world’s shittiest van, but we’re happy anyway, and we’ve all got on matching t-shirts from the concert and we’re covered in sweat.

I reach for it, too lazy to join him, so he gives me a look and plops down beside me on the bed, handing me the picture.

“So this is Chris, and that’s PJ. It was, like, last year, and we went up north. It was great. We saw Fall Out Boy, and it was _amazing_. I mean, we had to leave early because thanks, CF, but it was actually probably the best couple nights of my life.”

I don’t actually realize I’m gushing until I notice how Dan is looking at me, smiling softly and seemingly lost in my eyes or whatever. It’s weird.

Dan clears his throat and shifts closer. “So this is your friend group. They seem cool. I want to be in this _squad_.” He puts stress on this word and smirks at me.

“Oh, cringe,” I say. “How many more words are you going to pick up on as Dan?”

“I don’t know, but your outfit in this picture. Goals.”

“Af?”

“Goals af.”

I wince as I laugh, throwing my head against the pillow. “But if you want to be in our _squad_ , I mean, I don’t know, you might be busy and you might not even be allowed, but you could go to school with me. I don’t know. Maybe then you could meet my mum and not be this secret fixture in my room all day.”

He considers this, but not for very long. “You know, I’ve never gone to school. And I want to look out for you. Maybe I will. Of course, I’ll have to forge my entry.”

My eyes widen. “Uh, maybe you shouldn’t—”

“Phil. Older than clothes, remember? I know how to forge a document. They’ll never ask twice.”

I blow out air through my lips. “God, fine. If you choose to do it.”

“No, you’ve interested me now. He flips over to his stomach and makes the bed bounce. “Tell me about your classes.”

“Okay, well, I’ve got English and maths and chemistry, then government, French, and videography.”

Dan takes it all in, and I worry he might start judging me for a second, but I also wonder what classes he’ll take. If he takes all my classes, I might actually find a paranormal investigator to expel him from my house. “How’s your French?” he asks.

“I can tell you my name, that I like to sing and swim—which I don’t, by the way, and I can ask you what I should get my mum for her birthday. And I only know how to order coffee and chicken.”

“So if we ever go to France, we’re fucked.”

I laugh, actually liking the implication that we have a future of travel together. Except Dan and I in _France_ sounds a little bit too romantic to be comfortable. At least not when he’s right there beside me. “How many languages do you speak?”

“All of them,” he responds, aloof. I must look surprised because he adds, “Do you not get how long the world has existed?”

“Right,” I say. “Have you ever lived in France? I know what you said about your human forms, but… okay, yeah, that was a stupid question, nevermind.”

“No, no,” he interrupts over me, although his voice is quiet. “I’ve lived in France. I was there before I was here. Beautiful place, deserving of all of the romanticism it gets. Well, the place itself is deserving, but the people? Probably not, but humans are horrific, corrupt things, so naturally they would ruin it, but… not all of them.”

I nod. Harsh words. But I guess he knows best. “This is where I should ask if I’m apart of the minority, but I like to think I’m not horrific or corrupt.”

He smiles at me. “You’re not,” Dan says. “I’ll have to take French, I suppose, make fun of your teacher. I’ll bet their accent is awful and you kids don’t even know it. Épouvantable!”

“Dan, school is probably not what you’re expecting. You’ll have to actually talk to people. And you can’t mock a teacher.”

“What, you don’t trust my social skills?”

I shake my head slowly. Dan’s going to get himself beat up, which, considering he can defend himself, is kind of hilarious, but the thing is I don’t know if he can defend himself. What if something goes wrong, like he gets so angry that he accidentally kills someone? They’ll think he’s a witch or something. I’m not sure it’s a good idea.

Dan at school with me would be a dream. I’d actually have someone to sit at lunch with and talk to, be able to have that stupid little schoolboy crush that would make me feel like a normal boy, like it would complete this rite of passage to be accepted by the world as Phil Lester, the common seventeen-year-old.

But then there’s this factor of risk, and that just makes it so much better, and I hate myself for it. I’m not an adrenaline junkie by any means, I don’t think—I haven’t done enough things like this to know. Just this feeling of knowing that if we slip up once, everything could be ruined fills me with this strange excitement.

“Well, you should, because I’m going to school with you, and it’ll be fun.”

“See, there’s where you’re going to go wrong. School isn’t supposed to be fun.”

“Yeah, but I want to get away with so much shit. We can together. This is your last year, right?”

“Yes, but I want to go to uni without expulsion on my record.”

He rolls his eyes. “Nothing like that.”

I sit up, and he mirrors me. “I want some food. Do you eat?” I ask. “I know you probably don’t have to, but can you?”

Dan is still regarding it with the wariness only someone really inexperienced would have, which almost answers my question. “I can, but. Phil. Eating is so weird.”

I laugh. “Which part is the weirdest? Chewing? The digestion process? Finding an actual human toe in your school lunch?”

He sits forward. “Okay, like. I’ve been waiting for this one. First off, no, I don’t get the digestion process, and I don’t want to. Second, I don’t understand the three meals a day thing—don’t explain it to me, because I don’t care. Then there’s shitting, right? And chewing. And why are pancakes only acceptable in the morning, but I can’t have chicken before noon? Who comes up with this shit?”

“So you don’t want me to get you anything?” I chuckle.

“No,” he answers. “I’ll just be here studying. For school. Where I’m going.”

“Christ,” I roll my eyes. “Do your studying on Instagram instead of that textbook. Learn to be a teenager.”

“I’ll have to use your phone.”

“Okay, but—”

Mum opens the door mid-sentence. What the fuck, I didn’t even hear her. And here I am, sitting on the edge of my bed, still dressed. With a boy lying beside me.

“Are you alright?” she asks, not mentioning him, so maybe we’re okay.

“Yeah. Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Who were you talking to?”

He’s not there. Of course. Beam me up, Philly or whatever he does. “Myself, pretty much. I do that sometimes. Not often. I was going to get some cereal.”

“And you were talking to yourself about cereal?”

“Ye—no. No. Not cereal. Just life and stuff. You know, _I’ve got to do this, then that_ and that kind of stuff.”

So maybe school is a good idea for Dan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~maybe you shouldn’t hide your inhalers from your school, but i have asthma and do that sometimes.~~


	6. six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is such a late chapter lmao. i have felt like shiiiiiiiiit this week, and then my anxiety spikes for no reason, and as an actual hypochondriac, being sick with anxiety is pretty much always hell. but i’m feeling more like myself now.
> 
> thank you for being so patient with my ass <3

Dan clears his throat energetically to draw my attention away from the textbook I’ve been poring over for the past hour. He’s been doing some work of his own, I believe. It’s only two in the afternoon, and I have witnessed him commit a crime. Not that I mentioned it or paid attention or anything.

I rip my glasses off and fling them beside me, quirking an eyebrow at him, amused by his professional stance and the way he’s holding a paper in front of him like he’s about to give a campaign speech. My textbook is seamlessly smacked shut, as I had no problems with being given an excuse to not read another word on imaginary numbers (imaginary means doesn’t exist, which means I’m not using it in the real world, right?). 

He begins proudly, “My name is Daniel James Howell, born to James and Frances Howell. Raised in a quaint Wokingham home, I was homeschooled up until now by my dear, late mother, who was a teacher before deciding to fully devote her time to homeschooling me. My father and I have moved to London since her untimely death, but my father is struggling to make ends meet as is, so I will be enrolled in traditional schooling for the time being.”

A low whistle emits from my lips. “So that’s you, then? Are you still grieving or what?”

“I’m a remarkable, strong young man, Phillip, and I want to pursue an education.” He flattens a hand over his heart, wiping nonexistent tears with the other. “It’s what Mother would have wanted.”

I laugh, wondering if I should feel bad for doing so because I don’t. “You’re an idiot,” I say affectionately.

Dan breaks into a smile. “If you want to see an idiot, wait until you see how this fucking school laps it up.”

“Don’t count on it. Here’s a kid with a chronic illness who doesn’t get special treatment.”

“Yeah, but you don’t  _ want  _ special treatment.”

“Oh, and you do?”

“Of course!” he half-giggles, nodding like it’s obvious.

I guess he would. And he’ll get it, if he really does want it. I don’t know all about his powers. Mind control wouldn’t really make sense to have as Death, but knowing him, he won’t need it. He’s charismatic, despite being so reclusive and awkward, and he could wrap any of them around his finger. I may have met the same fate.

I pick up my glasses and rub at the foggy lense. Dan likes them. When I put them on, he actually  _ gasped  _ and went on to go absolutely mad over how “adorable” I looked in them. They’re okay—I only wear them when I have to, but I really just prefer contact lenses. The glasses are big and hipster-esque. Not full hipster. Which is even more hipster.

“I’m sure they’ll just snap you up. And in the best way. But the thing is I start back in two days, and I don’t know how the whole enrolling process goes. It could take longer.”

He smirks. “Find a way to hang in there, Philly. I know you can’t cope without me.”

“Oh, shut up. You know what I meant.”

Dan throws a smile over his shoulder as he makes his way to my closet and opens it. My closet is in essence embarrassing. Even without my nonexistent fashion sense clogging it up to the brim with graphic tees and skinny jeans, it’s cramped and the door is broken and has never closed right, and you can’t even walk into it. Movies have closets all wrong.

“So does this school have a uniform?”

I pause and squint up at the ceiling. “Weren’t you researching last night? On my laptop? Seems like the kind of thing you would pick up on.”

We look at each other, Dan looking particularly guilty. “Okay. I wasn’t actually researching your school. That was the plan, but then I started watching this video, and it led to another, which led to another…”   


I laugh. “I get it. And yeah, there’s a uniform.”

A deep red blazer and a hideously clashing baby puke green tie. I think at one point, before the school was made way back in the early 1900s, they sat down and made it their intent to make us all look as much like elves as possible. Instead of making toys, we’re making good test grades to make all the bigwigs happy.

Dan shifts the hangers one by one, taking note of everything in my entire wardrobe. I try not to fidget. Here’s a boy who can conjure up anything he wants to wear. His opinion doesn’t really matter when it comes to my family’s budget and how much of it goes into clothes.

“Where do you even get school uniforms? Do I buy it at a store? Do they give it to me? Will I have to go through a ritual that involves dark robes, chanting, and fire?”

“I think I have a spare,” I mention.

“No, I doubt it will fit me.” Oh, right. With cystic fibrosis comes awkward skinniness. Even my own uniform is baggy in awkward places and doesn’t hug me like the other boys. The same boys Dan will be interacting with on a daily basis. “I mean, I could technically drop fifteen pounds on the spot, but I think it would be easier to just create a uniform for myself.”

He pulls it out, holds it out far from him, and I don’t have to see his face to know his inner fashionista is weeping.

“Oh, yeah. It’s ugly.”

“Christmas was last month,” he says, distaste in his voice.

“At least we look festive in December.”

Dan can make a lot of things work, I think. He prefers to wear black, which he’s never explained and I wonder if it’s a conscious decision, if it would somehow set the world off track if he wore some color. He holds it in front of him and sways in front of the mirror, considering it in all its frumpy glory, his lips bunched to the side.

I would tell him it’s a lost cause, but then I know it will work for him in some form. It’ll fit him perfectly and his hair will be perfect and his eyes will be so brown and his smile will be so bright. He’ll get anyone he wants, and everyone will want him.

Fuck, this is going to be torture.

And it’s going to be torture that I think it’s torture because that’s not fair to Dan, but I can’t help it, and fuck. I’ll have to watch that, watch them all fall for him, watch them all replace me. I know he won’t just up and abandon me—who’s letting him freeload here?—but it won’t be the same. He might get a girlfriend, a boyfriend, something, and he’ll make so many friends.

I should be happy. I really should be. These are the kinds of things a normal friend wants for their pretty much best friend. You support their other relationships, and if you don’t, you’re either a bad friend, a bad person, or both. Who came up with that stupid fucking idea?

“Maybe if I do something to the sleeves,” he muses out loud.

Then it’s times like these when I realize Dan is a fashion-loving dork who thinks Larry Stylinson is a person, “a skeevy lawyer with a comb over” at that.

“You can’t do anything to your uniform,” I grin.

He fiddles with the lapels on the blazer, and I imagine myself in that blazer, and we’re alone in this room, and he’ll look at me through his lashes with flushed cheeks, his lips in a seductive pout, and he grabs me by those very same lapels and slams his back into the wall as our lips meet, desperate and longing—

“Not even a collar pin?”

_ What the fuck.  _ Right. Real world. Not the most blatantly seventeen-year-old-virgin fantasy ever. I haven’t gotten a break this week, not even when I need it the most. I’ve considered the bathroom, the shower, even my own bed when he’s out watching some politician die. But then I don’t want to risk him coming back only to find me fixing my, erm, problem —

“Nope. Not even a collar pin.”

Boys masturbate. I won’t try to appear like I’ve never done it before him, but there’s a face in my thoughts, a voice, a laugh, a smile—

“What other freedoms shall I expect them to take from me?”

“If you had any goals for the future that aren’t easily reached in four years and ends in an office, you may want to drop those plans before you go in.”

And it’s not like I’m trying to picture him. It just… helps.

Dan hums. “What do you think they would tell me if I told them I just want to take people’s souls and not worry about money because in the end it’s paper and I’m immortal?”

“‘I don’t know, Mr. Howell, that is a  _ very  _ large goal. Not everyone succeeds. Have you considered some smaller universities?’”

“I’m going to have the time of my life, aren’t I?”

“Just like me.”

He turns and smiles softly at me. It’s a special feeling when he gives me those smiles. They’re personal, made only for me. Only I made him smile that way. And every time he does it, I feel like it’s the first time seeing him.

I feel special.

xxx

  
“Heard you were in the hospital, Lester, not dead yet?”

  
“Still kickin’,” I mumble.

Dan says he can start Thursday. I’m not bothering to research the enrollment process. It’s not like I’ll ever have a child to put in school, so I’ll take his word for it.

On a scale of sad philosophers to horned demons with whips, Satan is chewing me. In other words, school is hell, and lunch is the deepest, coldest pit there is, designed only for the most evil of sinners.

There’s nowhere for me to go, nowhere to hide. Grudge-holding, probably threatened staff members circle the hall like buzzards looking for a corpse to nibble on, and I am perfect dead rodent material. I’m the type of kid who’d look for an escape to this torment, and instead of maybe doing something about it, you’ve gotta keep a close eye on me, make sure I don’t try and free myself from the bullying that actual school rules are supposed to protect me from.

I just want to eat. No, actually. I don’t want to eat. Why does this chicken have a green tint to it? Rephrase: I want this hour to be done with so I can go to French, then government, then go the fuck home.

If Dan has no other classes with me, please let him be in government with me. We don’t have to get involved in the ignorant arguments with all the misinformed brats in there. I imagine us just sitting in the back and laughing it all off. After days like this, there is nothing better than that feeling.

I shuffle my way to get a tray, scandalizing a passing group of people when I  _ almost  _ run into them. They scoff and mumble and whisper and I’m over it. I’ll tell Dan all about them when he’s here, and I won’t have to watch my feet drag along the tile so pathetically because I can just look at him. Which is almost incredibly creepy. We’ll certainly be a sight to be seen by these people. The sick loner kid pining after his weird friend.

Charlotte Bingham is in a wheelchair and my support group. She never complains. In this sad, sad room of teens with various problems, she always smiles. She smiles at me as she wheels by and tells me hi, to which I wave my fingers and tell her hi back shyly.

We won’t sit together, though. I sit with an assortment of misfits who don’t actually speak to each other. There’s a stoner, a girl obsessed with eyeliner and her phone, a church boy who looks about twelve, and this girl who no one knows how to categorize. And when kids can’t fit you in a clique, you’re automatically not included in any cliques.

It’s like an even more fucked up version of  _ The Breakfast Club,  _ except with a lot less talking and not as much cool music. Well, I’m sure Phone Girl is playing some cool music, but she’s not going to share. I wouldn’t expect her to.

Sometime in the middle of powering through some very suspicious-looking peaches, my phone buzzes in my pocket.

**hello from the other side**

The number isn’t identified, but I smile regardless, and I notice Stoner looking at me a little bit weird, like  _ he’s never smiled before, mate, like wha…? _

A little bit late on that reference there, babe. Do you have the right number?

**are u kidding me, babe? do u realize what i went through to find this number, babe? yes, babe.**

**yes, this is the right number.**

**babe.**

Okay. So, like, when did you get a phone?

**i had nothing to do.**

Did you miss me? ;)

**normally, i would be like, “don’t flatter yourself, bitch,” but it’s you, so i’ll be honest and say yes.**

That’s… sweet, actually. Okay. Yeah. I don’t really know what to say to that, but… thanks?

**you could ask me how i got ur phone number.**

I’d rather not ask, tbh.

**yeah, probs for the best.**

**does this mean i can send u annoying texts when ur at school?**

NO.

**yes.**

**you’re sitting in maths when suddenly, ur phone goes off. everyone’s looking at you, the teacher is mad. you check your phone, embarrassed, and all that’s there is one text that reads: According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyway because bees don't care what humans think is impossible…**

**_Show more_ **

WHAT THE FUCK

THAT TOOK ME SO LONG TO SCROLL THROUGH

YOU GOT A PHONE LIKE TEN MINUTES AGO WHY ARE YOU ALREADY SHITPOSTING ME

**we shitpost the ones we love most.**

oh

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know most phones don’t have a ‘see more’ option when texting, but i was not about to post the entire bee movie script like


	7. seven

“I’m actually nervous right now. Why am I nervous? I could be hotter than all of them by sheer willpower.”

I watch his reflection adjust his hair one last time, he swears, but he keeps wandering back over there and managing to find something wrong with his fringe. My own morning routine is pretty simple. Wake up however unwillingly, get dressed, brush hair, eat cereal, go to school. It’s like clockwork. Or like an actual prisoner. Meanwhile, Dan’s nabbed my mother’s hair straightener.

“You look… good.”

“Was that hesitation?” he asks, pushing his earrings in. Will he be allowed to have those? He’s Dan, so probably.

I breathe out a laugh, and my voice is only slightly shaky when I say, “No, you really do look good, I just wasn’t sure if that was weird.”

He shrugs. “I told you it’d be fun to be inside you, if you’ll remember, so it’s fine. We’ve reached a point in our friendship. If we were girls, we’d be totally okay with touching each other’s boobs.”

When I catch sight of my own hair in the mirror, I look back at Dan and decide perhaps just the tiniest bit of extra effort today wouldn’t hurt anything. There are flyaway hairs that travel to the wrong side, and I know that I have pieces in the back that stick straight out (my motto on hair: if I don't see it, it’s not my problem). I wet a comb and tap it against the edge of the sink. Just the tiniest bit of effort…

It barely makes a difference, my fringe as fringey as ever, but it feels different. It’s never been a matter of not caring how I look, it’s me  _ choosing  _ to not care because I do care, and the verdict is not good. My eyes are too big and my nose is weird and my hair already needs to be dyed again. An art teacher once told me I had “an interesting face.” Euphemisms can go fuck themselves.

“Your hair isn’t messy,” Dan observes casually before moving on back to himself. Now that’s not a euphemism. He’s peeking over his shoulder and watching me every so often now, though, only a little bit creepily.

I hold up the comb, running my finger along the teeth. “I used one of these.”

There’s a hazy look in his eyes that’s reflecting in the gentle smile spread faintly across his lips. He bounces his eyebrows at me and shows me his teeth in a grin. “It looks nice.”

“And there wasn’t even any hesitation.”

“Now that we’ve established our hypothetical boob-touching, I think we can move past hesitation. Like, Phil, you have nice hips.”

I look down as if I was unaware of what my own body looked like, reacquainting myself with the hips I’ve barely noticed before. Because, like, who looks at hips? Especially mine. Even if they were something to look at, my uniform isn’t very flattering to my figure. It’s at a point where it doesn’t create the illusion that I’m bigger because you know how scrawny I am, but I just look  _ bad.  _ Homeless, my token rich aunt once said.

“You’ve seen me in mostly flannel pajama pants and this thing; I’m surprised you can even make out the shape. I could have an literal hand sticking out of my stomach, and no one would ever know,” I say, trying my best to look at him. “But thanks. I… I like your dimples. Shit. Did that count as hesitation?”

“Mmm,” Dan considers. “We’ll work on it. For now, the dimples and I thank you.” He smiles and pokes a lively finger in his deeper dimple and goes back to his hair hopefully for the last time.

I lean back on the sink, my elbows pressed against it. Technically I’m all set, and if I don’t come down and eat breakfast soon, Mum will throw a fit, but it feels wrong to just leave Dan here. Plus, God knows how long he would take if he wasn’t on a schedule.

“I don’t see why you didn’t just  _ give yourself  _ the perfect hair. No flat irons or brushes needed.”

“Truth be told, this look was somewhat of an accident,” he says, gesturing to his face. “Package deal, I guess. Naturally wavy, unruly hair.”

My lips pursed and an eyebrow raised, I ask, “An accident? How does that work?”

Dan shrugs. “Don’t know. Just does,” he answers quietly.

“Well, unruly hair or not, we need to be leaving soon. I’m going to go eat breakfast, so you can… I have no idea what you can do.”

He winces. “Nothing, really, besides stand outside your school like a weirdo. I’m looking at my schedule, and there’s nothing I particularly want to witness right now—lots of gruesome deaths about to happen that wouldn’t make me late, all fucking gross. I’ll just do my hair.”

“If you say so, Daniel Howell, but if you’re not out there when I am, you’re on your own.”

“Oh, right, you  _ can’t  _ be late for school. I almost forgot what a fucking nerd you are.” 

He flings a comb in my direction half-heartedly, which I easily dodge and catch it, tossing it in the sink and laughing. “How did you almost forget?”

“I didn’t. Now go eat your gross food.”

“Cereal is amazing,” I inform him confidently.

He rolls his eyes as I slip out the door, closing the door and praying Mum doesn’t walk in on him testing out her perfume.

Breakfast, as always, is uneventful enough, except my stomach is missing the usual pit of debilitating anxiety and bottomless dread as I think about school. Instead I’m thinking lighter thoughts like  _ oh, Dan, might like her, but he’ll  _ hate  _ him  _ and  _ He’ll laugh so hard at that stupid poster  _ and  _ I can’t wait to hear him speak French.  _ Maybe I’ll keep that last one to myself.

To my surprise, Dan is actually on time. He’s waiting for me, perched directly in front of where the sun should be, if not for the grey clouds engulfing the sky or the sun not being down with waking up this early either, but it’s actually got a choice in the matter.

No gust of wind could possibly make him look any less like an angel, no matter what he thinks as he holds his fringe in place. I was right about the uniform: he looks fantastic. Everyone will just love him. I’m happy for him already. Bursting at the seams with happiness.

“Please tell me we get to ride the Tube. I’ve never done it,” he says like an excited child. Was I that happy for school when I first started? I can’t remember, but I can’t imagine it. I do, however, remember missing the entire second week of school because my body already wasn’t having it. That was when my mother proposed homeschooling, but I refused. I wonder why.

I shake my head apologetically, and he pouts. “It’s a five minute walk.”

We start walking, and Dan pulls in his arms around himself, desperately trying to get warm. It’s honestly not that cold, but his body has outbursts of strange reactions to certain things. I don’t quite know the cause, and it’d be interesting to learn, but I find myself constantly having to remind myself that Dan is a friend and not a science experiment.

“We better get to ride it soon. And holy  _ fuck,  _ it’s cold. And my head hurts. Do you have a nurse? Will pills even work on me?”

“You’ll be lucky if she even lets you stay for five minutes, and the Tube isn’t even that great. It’s uncomfortable and you will get  _ very  _ intimate with sweaty strangers. That goes for the nurse’s office, too.”

“Sounds like my everyday life,” he says, and it does. Before me, I guess, his main source of entertainment was watching people die, which is hard to believe when I look at him and slightly unnerving. “Did I show you these, at least?” He holds out his wrist and turns it, the diamonds just barely glimmering. 

I don’t even think I own a pair of cufflinks, but Dan decided that he was going to add something Dan-esque to his uniform, so he got bedazzled skulls. This is the guy who could have potentially gotten off to watching someone’s grandmother slip away from her family.

“Yes, you did, and I still can’t believe them.”

He holds them up, shaking his wrists in front of me. “It’s cute.”

“Yeah, and anyone who doesn’t get the joke, which is everyone but me, is going to think you’re a regular at Hot Topic.”

“You mean I don’t look badass?” He almost sounds genuinely disappointed.

I have to refrain from tapping his nose as the desire fills me to do so. That’s kind of weird, isn’t it? Maybe not for us, I don’t know. “No, I think you look adorable. Oh, see, now that wasn’t hesitation.”

Dan grabs my hand and runs it across his chest and chuckles. “I was aiming to be as badass as you.”

“Drowning from the inside, Dan. You’ll never be as badass as me.”

“On the general subject of badassness,” says Dan, “approximately how many actual asses will we be kicking today?”

I laugh somewhat sarcastically. “How many do you think? I don’t go around kicking asses, Dan.”

“Yeah, but I’m here now,” he says simply.

Not saying that I’ll help him or outspokenly encourage him to get me into some trouble, but if he wants to, I don’t see myself stopping him. In my head, at least ten different scenarios have played out on how he would have dealt with some comments said towards me, whether they’re said to him or if he’s defending me. There’s something appealing about him getting defensive over me, which is an embarrassing thought that makes me cringe when I think about it for longer than five seconds, but those four seconds are undeniably pleasing.

Then, of course, I can’t lie and say we don’t need to defend ourselves, because we do. I already do, and if Dan plans to continue being my friend in public, then he probably will have to defend himself, too, which is so fucking stupid and makes it seem like the universe is trying to make me feel guilty for something. Cheating death, maybe.

The universe does so tend to come back and bite you in the ass, and I’m not completely against thinking it won’t. I’d like to, and Dan would like to, and as long as it’s not on our minds, we don’t have to worry about it, and we’ll cross the bridge when we get there. Just like death.

“I won’t have you running around as my hitman, if that’s what you mean.”

“Bummer. I kind of want to be a hitman.”

“You idiot. You’re the world’s hitman.”

He breaks out into a grin. “Oh. Right. I  _ am  _ pretty badass, aren’t I?”

“And you’ve got the rhinestones to prove it,” I bring up.

Dan gapes at me, offence present in his eyebrows and head posture. He holds up his wrists once again. “Excuse me, sir, these are fucking  _ diamonds. _ ”

I chuckle. I’ve never really talked about money with Dan. Clearly he’s got a lot, but I don’t know how. He’s never worked a job from what I can tell—and considering some of the questions he’s asked me about school (“If I want to go home, do I just walk out?”), that isn’t just a good hunch—but I guess when you’re around for that long, you can get money. And lots of it. I wouldn’t expect to see Death homeless.

“Next you’ll be walking into school in a Givenchy suit. Or whatever the hell they make. I think high fashion looks like shit.”

“I agree on some, but a Givenchy suit, that’s not bad. I need to start taking tally of my Kanye moments. I intend for there to be a lot.”

“Then  _ you’ll  _ be the one getting your ass kicked,” I laugh.

“Even with my diamond cufflinks?” he asks, fluttering his eyelashes.

School is visible in the distance. My stomach twists suddenly and quickly, whether it be excitement or some offspring of anxiety. “They will sell your diamond cufflinks and use the money to buy cheap beer and weed.”

He puckers his bottom lip. “Well, that’s no fun. The money you could get from these could  _ at least  _ get you the good beer.”

“There’s good beer?”

“Oh, right. Fair point. Wine, then.”

“I can’t have either, I don’t think, and I don’t really want to find out, so I’ll leave you to it.” Dan leans in closer to me, his eyebrows pulled in. “What?”

“I don’t eat or drink, Phil, remember? It’s all gross to me.”

I let out a tiny sigh of relief. “Oh. Yeah. Sorry, I just thought for a second that you were one of those fancy, wine-loving guys, who make me really uncomfortable, by the way.” I smile. “Must have been the diamonds.”

He smiles back. “Hell yeah I look fancy. Although, I hope I don’t make you uncomfortable.”

Only sometimes.

This is where I would assure him that they only make me uncomfortable because of how overly pretentious they are, but I figure Dan is inherently pretentious and a natural show-off, so I’ll just leave it at that. We’ve arrived, anyway, and my insides are still tugging at me like a child to their mother’s sleeve.

Unlike how I initially imagined it, we don’t get any immediate looks. Dan’s just another face that’s blended in for now, waiting for the perfect moment to be exploited, which will be once they find out he’s new. We walk up the front steps where a few kids are loitering and give Dan a look for about half-a-second, not caring when they can’t place the face.

New kids, I’ve learned, can have one of three outcomes. Outcome one is the instant popularity result, which speaks for itself and is a possible candidate for Dan’s experience as a normal teenager. Outcome two is the outcast result which also speaks for itself but won’t happen to Dan because I’m here and he’s Dan. Outcome three is the blending result where they take the normal school route: find some friends, become just like them, fall somewhere in the system. He won’t be like that, either, I don’t think.

Dan’s going to create an entirely new outcome, and even I don’t know what it will be.

“These are the kids who pick on you?” he asks me quietly as we maneuver through the hallway. I don’t know much about transferring, but I’m almost sure Dan has things he should be doing right now that he most certainly hasn’t forgotten about. He’s just refusing to do them.

I watch as he makes eye contact with a boy and they pass, craning their necks to hold each other’s gaze. The tugging sensation creeps its way up to my chest until I see how unimpressed he looks. The boy must have been looking rather murderously his way when he saw that face looking at him that way.

“Some of them,” I defend. “Honestly, I don’t even have it that bad. There are kids who are bullied way worse than me. I wouldn’t even call it bullying in my case—it’s second nature. You know,  _ he’s weird, so it’s okay to laugh. _ ”

Dan stops dead in the middle of the hallway, looking at me shocked. I look around anxiously at the people glaring at us for not moving along, but then I can only focus on his face, how angry and… disappointed he looks. He’s going to say something when,

“Listen, I know some of us don’t have lungs, but can we keep moving here?”

His head turns around almost in slow motion. I can hear the  _ Psycho  _ sting, just sharp, high-pitched  _ rhee! rhee! rhee!’s  _ ringing out as Dan glares at the guy who’s two inches taller than him (and Dan’s tall).

“That was,” he begins, his voice low, “the worst one-liner I have ever had the displeasure of hearing.”

The guy—I don’t even know him—stares at Dan, looking confused and possibly scared. “Do you have something better? Who even  _ are  _ you?”

“I do have better. In fact—”

“Dan, come on. Let’s just go,” I say. He looks shocked again.  _ Why didn’t you let me roast him?  _

He walks along beside me, fuming, his arms crossed. I should say something. But he won’t talk to me. It’s awkward as fuck, walking along an angry guy who won’t acknowledge your existence.

After a while, I finally say, “You need to go—”

“You go,” he cuts me off. “I’m going outside for a while.”

I don’t tell him he can’t this time, don’t write it off as another one of his cute little quirks. I let him go. I don’t stop him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the skull cufflinks are [real](http://www.cufflinks.com/pave-diamonds-skull-cufflinks.html) and almost 29 thousand fucking dollars, btw.


	8. eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there’s homophobic language in this chapter! and although it isn’t explicitly labeled as such, phil’s narration and thoughts do start to shift towards his depression, and it gets rather dark in certain places, but again, most of it is hinted at rather than just outright said.

At this point, I should stop looking for him.

With the start of every class, I find myself glancing over my shoulder hopefully, waiting for him to stumble in, all faux clumsiness and cute smiles, apologizing for being so late and explaining how new he is. He’ll win the hearts of everyone immediately. But the only impression he’s made today is that weird Phil has/had a crony for about two minutes before he completely ditched.

When I walk the halls, I peek out the windows, hoping to see him out there. But he would have been caught already, and he’s probably off having a drink (or not drinking, I guess) with an artist in Rome who’s about to accidentally drive his car off the road and end up on the news tomorrow for the first time, finally being recognized by the public.

Thankfully, though, his outburst has not backfired on me. No one has even seemed to acknowledge it. Either they don’t care, the news wasn’t important enough to travel, or Dan actually did scare them off. All three are plausible, surprisingly. Dan may not seem very scary at first, but he can definitely have his moments. He  _ is _ Death.

My phone sits face down on the corner of my desk as I fail to concentrate on my lessons. I’ve drifted from class to class like a distracted zombie. When I’m not falling into an endless loop of  _ what if _ ’s, I’m caught between decisions like these where I debate with myself whether or not I should try and text him, call him, something.

The rational part of my brain says yes. He’s only angry at the guy, really, and he’s just disappointed in me (I think). We can talk through this or he can get over his hissy fit one, and we can move on. He wouldn’t be this angry with me that he would leave forever. Surely he’s been disappointed worse than this before. Right?

The other side of my brain isn’t necessarily irrational, but it’s not rational by any means and it also completely devours all my rational thoughts, slashing through every tiny hole in my plans, ripping it until it is beyond repair. Think he just needs some time to cool off? Oh, no, mate, he has gone and moved to Canada and changed his face and name.

I can’t have a good scenario play out in my head. No matter what the outcome, this won’t end the way I want it to. Dan will want me to stick up for myself, and I can’t do that, not yet. I always think I can. I’ll wake up and think: this is the day I will finally not be a victim. But then I get there and it’s back to square one. A cycle I’ll never escape.

We think about change. As humans, it’s what we do, what keeps us going. Even the slightest change can have consequences that affect everything. Somewhere, someone said,  _ you know, I, a twenty-seven-year-old man, am not going to marry my thirteen-year-old cousin, let’s just see how it goes _ , and they rest is history. We don’t understand the weight of our decisions until we finally see the impact it has, and the fear of what that impact will be is what holds us back.

For instance, I can’t say  _ But I am just a teenage boy, and these are just other teenage boys, and we will become adults, and none of this will matter,  _ because someone like Dan, who’s lived forever, has seen what a difference people make everyday, and I trust his opinion. I already know he’s right—I  _ should  _ be defending myself, and I shouldn’t stop others from defending me, but actually being willing to make that change is a whole other level that has yet to be explored. 

It is a door that has a 50/50 chance of either having a man-eating demon the size of the room or all the money in the world. Are you going to open the door? I don’t want a bad ending with Dan.

I don’t have a dream ending for me and Dan, and I probably never will. I’m okay with that now because I realize that there is no dream ending to be had. Say I get my wish and he somehow falls in love with me. Great. Fantastic. Where does it end? How does it end? If love ends with death, if we are to end with death, how am I supposed to be completed?

He and I are trapped in limbo. Damned if we do, damned if we don’t. Or, that’s how I feel, at least. I can’t be with him, but at the same time, I can’t be without him. I can do nothing but be with him. I think about it all the time, more so than perhaps anything else. It’s a consuming feeling, one I’m not even sure how much longer I can take of it.

The girl next to me gets a text message. Her phone vibrates, and for a second I hope it’s mine. I snatch it up and flip it over, carefully hiding it under my desk in my lap. Nothing. She’s smiling down at her thighs, typing out a reply.

A tap at my shoulder. Some snickering. Guess I won’t be seeing my phone for the rest of the day. There’s some satisfaction in the fact that the girl’s phone was taken, too, even if that’s borderline sadistic.

My teacher, Mr. Poole, is already turning away, and it occurs to me that he could try to contact me and I wouldn’t pick up. Then  _ I  _ would seem angry at  _ him,  _ which would only make him angrier and—

“I…” I say quietly, my voice wavering, a contrast from the very clear screaming my brain was doing. “I’m expecting a very important text.”

He nearly doesn’t hear me. Only a few pairs of eyes attach to me at first, the ones closest to me, naturally.

“‘Important’ and ‘text’ don’t go together in a sentence,” he smiles, and there are a few impassive chuckles muffled in the air. God, I hate male English professors. What fucking pretentious dicks. They always think they’re so amazing.

“Do doctors text nowadays?” Ben Oliver says to “the guy beside him,” but it’s loud enough for everyone to hear, and I suppose that was the point. Now that gets some actual giggles.

Mr. Poole, to his credit, does at least glare at Ben hard enough to send him squirming in his seat, which is enough for me. But then he grins at the girls and asks, “Ashley, was your text important?”

She nods, eyeing her phone in his hand longingly. “My boyfriend.”

It’s like she says it just to be saying it. People love to gloat when they have a boyfriend as is, but I seem to be noticing it so much more lately. They say when you learn a new word, it’s all you’ll hear. It’s kind of like that. If the word was ‘moist.’ That one will make you feel uneasy.

“Maybe Phil’s waiting on his boyfriend to text, too,” Ben Oliver’s friend says, clearly wanting to capitalize off of Ben’s previous joke, but his gets some stronger laughs. I wonder if this is going to become some kind of competition.

“Hey,” Mr. Poole says loudly. “That’s enough.”

He looks at me apologetically.  _ Sorry they thought you were gay, Phil, that would be a tragedy. _

“It’s very important,” I more or less rephrase, my voice hollow, the same wounded look on my face, meeting somewhere between someone who just got slapped in the face and a sad puppy.

It’s like I’m standing bloody in the middle of a ballroom screaming and all anyone can do is twirl their villain mustaches and laugh at how droll the situation is. My throat is raw and scratchy, and if I talk anymore, I might actually break down and start weeping.

“End of the day,” he says, half-smile still in place, and walks back to his desk. 

He carries on about symbolism and I cannot hear. I’d rather just be alone, curl up in a ball, and forget the world. School tends to have this effect on me. I wish I had a quiet place where I could crumple and crack in a judgement-free zone, but that will never happen. Instead I’m doomed to live out the same day over and over again, just sometimes with some extra death-related quirks added as a bonus. But it’s still the same shit.

I listen to the same people everyday say the same things, and I’m just so tired. I’m tired of all of this. But there is no alternative to this, nothing I want other than this. Because I don’t want new people—I want to be alone. Then at the same time, I don’t want to be alone. It’s what I fear most in the world. I’m trapped. There is no alternative.

“Um. Hey.”

The guy beside me is looking warily. He might be a little bit sheepish about asking for notes or a pencil or whatever, but it’s not like I’m in a position to turn him down or say something mean. Or am I?

“What?” I ask. My voice. I’m definitely not in a position to be mean right now. My fingers go to my throat and I clear it, but I dab my cheek with my other hand, looking away from him. He only leans forward, trying to get a look.   
  
“Are you alright or…?”

He starts to draw attention to us. He’s not particularly popular, but he’s liked by the popular kids in a  _ he’s a decent enough, kind of rich, smart guy  _ way. I won’t see him sitting with them at lunch, but they’re still going to notice a scene like this.

“Can you shut up?” I snap, placing my palms over my eyes and burrowing into myself the best I can do without pulling my knees up.

“I’m just asking. You’re sort of crying in the middle of class.”

“Then do you think I’m okay?”

I know he’s not trying to callous and probably doesn’t even have bad intentions, but I’m at the end of my rope here. Now I’ve got an audience of sneering teenagers looking my way and I’m  _ crying  _ in  _ public.  _ The last time I cried in public was literally at a concert, and that was acceptable. The last time I cried at school, I was twelve and I couldn’t breathe. That’s acceptable, too, I think.

This? Maybe not so much.

It is essentially over a boy, after all. Not even a boy. An unavoidable force of nature in the body of a boy. And he didn’t even break up with me or anything, because we’re not a couple and we never will be. It’s that he  _ might  _ think I’m angry at him. I shouldn’t be crying, not in public, not in private. He’s the one who overreacted. This might be an overreaction, but he should remember who did it first.

My tears dry up quick enough, but the damage is done. This will be remembered and talked about, which I may not care about now, but I will later. Can I somehow make this his fault?

When class ends, I make the transition from distracted zombie to flesh-eating, dead-inside zombie for the rest of the day. Everything I do feels automatic and slow, like it’s not even registering in my brain what’s going on. I’m numb to the whispering today, numb to the patronizing. I’m altogether just ready for the day to end.

I don’t think I talk for the rest of the day. Not to say I’m usually Mr. Sociable when I’m at school, but any other time, there’s at least  _ something  _ I can say to someone. But I can’t even be bothered to talk to Mr. Poole when I go to get my phone.

He’s waiting for me, all smiles and young-30s charm that the girls fantasize and giggle about. Honestly, I hope he feels bad that I didn’t speak. Maybe he’ll think I’m angry or going to tell my mother because it actually did have to do with my health. I don’t know when I became so sadistic.

I don’t suppose there’s any point in waiting to walk home with Dan, so I head out down the pavement, and I’m about fifty feet from school when I hear a familiar: “Bad day there, Lester?”

There are three of them. You’re gonna try and start shit with an already-drained boy with a chronic illness and you think  _ oh, yeah, I better get my fucking backup.  _ It’s overkill, a crude caricature of my life.

They grin when I turn and give them attention. I merely shrug and say, “I think that deciding if a day is bad or not should happen at night,” I say, not exactly believing it, but what else am I supposed to say? I can’t say no because they know I did, and I can’t say yeah because, like.

“Is that the phone?” Dustin Montgomery, the leader of the wolf pack, I’m assuming, asks me. “The one you cried over?”

I hold it up, letting it shimmer in the light. There were no texts. Not a missed call, not a fucking game notification. Wasn’t worth crying over. “Yeah. It’s all fine now.”

Then it’s snatched from my hands, just plucked from my fingers like a wacky eyebrow hair. I don’t demand they give it back or show any signs of outward emotion. My inner thoughts are so impassive at this point, that there is nothing within me screaming at me to get it back, that it will be really hard to explain to my mother, even more so than it will be to explain why I’m late coming home.

Instead I just say, “Mate,” and hope for the best.

He clicks it on and I remember. Now something is screaming at me to fight back.

“Who is  _ this? _ ” he frowns, looking disgusted.

“Just give me the phone,” I say, holding my hand out weakly. It isn’t shaking, my voice isn’t shaking. We’re good. Now if I could just get my heartbeat under control, we’ll be perfect.

He comes closer. “Are you  _ actually  _ gay?”

“Are you  _ actually  _ going to hit a kid with cystic fibrosis?”

That’s that, then. Me being gay, that was supposed to be a joke. It’s always either a joke or something bad, something anyone sympathetic to me feels I shouldn’t be. If those people aren’t even with me, then who is?

It must hit him suddenly, as if something in my face or body language was just shouting out yes. He does throw my phone down, though. I’m not sure if it’s broken or not, but I dropped my phone and it broke—that’s a lie I can get away with.

Dustin backs away, as if to distance himself from me as much as possible, that look still on his face. “That’s fucking disgusting,” he informs me, pointing at me forcefully.

“Having a random guy who could be literally anyone as my lockscreen is disgusting?” I ask.

Everything after that just takes a turn for the worse, I think. It all happens at once; there is no sequence of events, only a jumbled mess of shouting, pushing, and a abrupt clap of thunder followed by a deluge of rain that soaks us all immediately, but that’s not going to stop the chaos, only add to it.

“Now who the fuck is this?” one of his cronies manage to shout over the combined effort of Dustin and the rain making it especially hard for me to hear anything, since it’s right there in my face.

And there he is, arms crossed, eyes furious but also, well, quite dead. I’m not going to call him my knight in shining armor. I couldn’t have protected myself, but… Nothing. He’s protecting me, and I appreciate it.

“You’re the… you’re the fag on the phone,” Dustin says.

He’s changed clothes since I last saw him this morning. Now he’s reverted back to his all-black ways, and it just adds to the honest scariness of him right now. No words are coming out of his mouth, no movements coming from his body, although he does tilt his head to the side.

Three steps forward. I can hear his shoes squish on the wet grass and mud beneath him, and I look at him for some kind of understanding, some kind of idea of what’s going on and where we stand, but he’s not looking at me.

Dan’s close to the scene now. I watch him the whole time—I know I don’t look away. So I don’t know what happened.

“What the fuck—” one of them breathes, clearly petrified, but of what? His face never changes. Instead he stands there, stoic and unmoving, not afraid in the least of them.

But they’re afraid of him, apparently. They take off running, yelling, maybe even crying. I watch after them shocked, and I wonder what I’ll see when I turn around, if he’ll still be Dan, if he’ll still be there at all.

A pair of hands grip me and turn me around before I can, though, and the thunder strikes again, the lightning getting dangerously close to us.

“Are you alright?” There’s a hand on my cheek that goes back to my arm and holds me at an arm’s length so the hand’s owner can look me over. His breathing is erratic, and his eyes are filled with tears like the rain crashing down on us.

“Yes,” I answer as he inspects me.

“Where did they hit you?” He’s actually crying now. I don’t know how much more I can convince him that I’m fine and here—I’m already here.

“They didn’t hit me,” I assure him. His eyes have changed so quickly, from what he is to what he truly is, in a matter of seconds. They’re filled with tears and worry, his breathing still edging on hyperventilation. “They only pushed me a bit.”

“No one—” he tries to say, but he has to swallow the lump in his throat first, wiping his eyes ferociously. “ _ No one  _ can do that to you.”

He hisses it rather than says it. I’m ready to stop him in whatever he tries because I have to understand that Dan has the capability to kill them. He’s more capable of doing it than anyone in the world.

“They didn’t hit me,” I repeat.

Dan latches onto me, his nails like talons in my shoulders. I realize when I wrap my arms around him that he’s shaking. Violently. I don’t think I’m shaking, and I was the one who was almost attacked.

“They can’t touch you,” he whispers (or, again, hisses) in my ear.

“But it’s fine, they—”

“They could have  _ hurt. You. _ ” He says this like it’s the worst possible thing I could have happen in my life. I don’t know about him, but in my mind, I’m not worth this reaction. “But it’s okay because I’m here,” he tells me, and it could have been almost comforting had it not been for the voice and how he follows it up with, “And I’ll kill them. I’ll kill them all. I’ll—”

“You’re scaring me,” I blurt out. It sounds young and childish, but it’s the only thing I can think of to get him to stop. And it does.

His fingers loosen and flatten against my shoulders and he leans back, his face soft and gentle and tear-streaked. Yet he almost looks surprised that I would feel that way. Did he expect me to want him to kill them? Does he think that’s why I keep him around?

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, actually whispers. He takes his hands back and covers his face as he begins to cry again. The rain continues to fall, the thunder growling louder as his sobs get louder.

I take him into my arms again, my movements uncertain and slow.

“I don’t want anything to ever happen to you,” he sobs into my shoulder. I rub circles into his back, trying to grasp what’s going on in his mind. I suppose I would relate if something could happen to Dan, but when it comes to me, I don’t feel as important. As it should be. He’s something inevitable and universally vital, and I’m incredibly insignificant, not even just in comparison to him.

“I wasn’t hurt.”

“But you could have been! And then… and… and…” I tighten my hold on him as he cries some more. “What would I do? Tell me right now, what would I do? I wouldn’t have a choice but to let you go, and I won’t, I  _ won’t.  _ You’re mine, and you’ve always been mine, and I refuse to lose you again. I—God. I promised myself I wouldn’t let this happen.”

But we knew it was going to. I turn his cheek. Bravery. It’s okay to be brave today. We only look at each other for a few precious seconds before it’s lips on lips, slamming against each other, weeks of repressed emotions and actions all coming through.

I promised myself, too. But the thing is that we don’t decide what’s best for us. We have to take it, whatever it is, and sometimes it’s easier than other times. For me, nothing has ever been easier than to fall into this kiss, my first real kiss, and surrender everything. He and I are putting everything out there, giving it all up for this one moment.

And it was worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> p.s. i think either after this chapter or the next (probably this one), i’m going to take a break for like a week or two, mostly just to write some other stuff because i haven’t been happy with these chapters lately. like, even this one, which was supposed to be this ‘fucking finally’ thing just feels so meh in comparison to how i felt about earlier chapters. and if writing it felt so bad, i imagine reading it must be even more meh. i just need some time to remove myself from this fic so i can come back stronger or some shit idk
> 
> as someone with severe anxiety and occasional depression, there’s something about posting a chapter i feel is bad that just completely sets me and my brain off track. it’s very stressful and unhealthy for me to feel like this everyday, and i need a break.
> 
> i’ve actually been depressed lately, and i’m not even sure why, which happens. i’m sure bad chapters aren’t the cause of it, but it certainly doesn’t help. so i need this time alone to sort through it, get my head fixed, and get my writing fixed.
> 
> when i come back, hopefully this fic will start to be the way i want it and the way i’m sure a reader would want it. but, i mean, if i’m going on break, i have to leave you with this ending lmao


	9. nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all for your patience! i, like, miscalculated and this came later than i thought i would (i think???) idk i’m not good at math j u s t
> 
> all of your comments on the last chapter (and every chapter) were beautiful and i am so grateful for all of you. <33
> 
> to be honest with you, anxiety-wise, i’m still not where i’d like to be with it, although i have been through a great deal of improvement. i’ve been contemplating making a really long tumblr post detailing everything just to get it out, but idk, maybe it would be a good idea, and maybe not.
> 
> you can [follow me](http://flowerchildmycroft.tumblr.com) if you want or need more johnlock metas and shitposting in ur life. (i’ll just self-promo here because my last, like, fifteen followers have been porn blogs and i’m v confused)
> 
> nevertheless, i’m very glad to be back and excited to be back in this story with this world and these characters and lose myself in it once again. once again, thank you so, so much for everything.

What now?

Here I am, with everything I’ve been waiting for and wanting for the past month or so, and now that it’s done, now that I’ve finally got him this close, I have no idea what comes next. I don’t even know what I want now.

We’re both so vulnerable right now. Twenty minutes from now when Dan has calmed down, he could decide that maybe this isn’t what he wants and what just happened was a mistake. And it could be a mistake, I know, but right now it isn’t, and I need these minutes, however many there are, to soak in every last detail about him as if it’s the last time I’ll ever see him.

The rain is budging, showing gentle signs of letting up sometime soon, but getting drenched isn’t a concern of mine. I’m standing with Dan in my arms, his head on my shoulder, and his arms around me as he were holding something special.

For me to say I feel like I’ve won somehow seems weird, even though I do feel like I’ve “won” in some capacity. In all ways it can be wrong it is. He isn’t human, and I understand that, but who he is and who I am have nothing to do with that. He and I without the formalities are so irrevocably  _ right. _

No one can take this moment from me. Nothing can happen that would change my mind, no person, no event. Not even Dan, I don’t think, could fully push me away. If he decides he doesn’t want it, then I won’t fight it and I won’t force him, but I’ll always be in this moment, stuck forever in an endless loop of a singular moment of bliss in which I finally felt I belonged.

Whether I feel I belong in this spot or with this person, I know it’s a feeling I wouldn’t trade or change regardless.

I don’t know what to say. I guess he doesn’t, either. I don’t think he’s been through this as many times as I’d thought. Too much pain, maybe. Christ. Am I luring him into a situation that has no other outcome than heartbreak?

Someday, I will die. Four words. They’re my mantra, my anthem. No matter how old I am, outsiders always think it’s too morbid for me to think this way, but they don’t get it. They whisper behind my back to my mother with concern in their eyes. She gets it. Dan, of all people, must get it.

“What will I do with you?” A mumble against my shirt, muffled by the fabric and light in the tone to make up for the rawness of his voice.

I smile, and I know it’s real because he can’t see it anyway, because no one can see it. That’s when you know. My hand rubs his back, my fingers tracing patterns, reminding me with every touch that he’s real. This is his skin, this is his voice, these are his lips, and he is real.

“I don’t know,” I answer.

Dan nuzzles in towards my neck. It feels like he considers kissing my neck out of habit, despite there being no habit, but he goes back on it. We haven’t come to an unspoken consensus yet like we usually do. Can we kiss again? Will we kiss again? If he’s questioning it, then maybe there’s a chance.

“I think,” he whispers near my earlobe, “properly meeting your mother would be a good place to start. And actually going to school wouldn’t hurt, hmm?”

“Wait. You want to meet my mom?” 

That… changes things. He wouldn’t be a dirty little secret anymore. He’d be my friend Dan from school. My boyfriend Dan from school. Wow. We’ll have to start lying, though. He can’t go around exposing himself as death to everyone, and we know that. I still don’t know why he even exposed himself to me.

“Yes. I knew I would eventually. Do you want me hiding in your bedroom like a creep anymore? If she knows me, then I can be in your bedroom like a creep without hiding—it’s brilliant.”

I’ve never brought home a friend before. I didn’t know people even did that outside of movies and TV shows that feature perfect families. People in the real world are much more guarded than that because the real world has conditioned us to guard our safety and secrets. I can’t imagine randomly coming home with a guy my mum’s never heard of wouldn’t stir up some questions.

_ Who is he?  _ Dan. He’s… a friend.

_ When did you even meet?  _ Not too long ago. He just transferred schools. He can tell you all about it if he wants.

_ And you brought him home because…?  _ I like him.

_ In what way? _

I can’t answer with the truth because it could go wrong, and I can’t lie because, well, I can’t lie. She would know instantly. And if things do go wrong, she wouldn’t know that I understand. She wouldn’t get it. It’s for the better that she doesn’t know her son is having a relationship with actual death, but if he were to end it, she would see it as her child having his heart broken by a boy for the first time.

“Now, your dad,” he introduces cautiously. “You’ve never mentioned one, I’ve never seen one…”

He’s making it seem harder than it is.

I would shrug if he weren’t still draped over my shoulder. “He’s not around. I don’t ask questions.”

“Ever?” Dan asks, almost sounding like he’s in disbelief.

“Well, you know. Absent father. No sentimental photos, no second side of the family, and I have no memory of him, so I don’t think he’s dead. I know what happened, just—I don’t know the specifics.”

They aren’t hard conclusions to come to. Or are they? Why do people want to leave their children? Was it  _ me  _ in particular? Could he not bear the illness? From what I can assume, both of my parents were carriers. Cystic fibrosis is a recessive thing. There was a 75% chance of not passing it on. If I hadn’t been that 25%, where would he be?

It doesn’t excuse him. I know it doesn’t. 

I used to doubt myself, telling myself that some people just can’t handle things like that, people like me, and that’s how the world works. Maybe he didn’t want to see me die or suffer. But then I got older and I realized: I would do anything to be able to become an adult and have a child.  _ That’s  _ how the world works. It’s unfair, and it doesn’t make any sense. But leaving your children. No. That’s never the kid’s fault.

“Sorry,” he says.

“I hardly ever think about it, so it’s all right.”

“And now I’m making you think about it. Shit, I’m not doing well today, am I?”

“I’d say you’re doing pretty well,” I say. After all, I remember doing the same thing to him that one time a thousand years ago. Yet I still don’t know what the hell it was all about. Maybe I won’t ever.

He hums. “I got a kiss. That’s a big accomplishment. Was that—nevermind.”

“Was that my first kiss?”

Dan goes tense, but I don’t mind him asking. Honestly, who would look at me and think  _ oh, yes,  _ he _ gets kisses _ ?

“It was the first one that meant something.”

My first kiss was with a girl. A real eye-opener, if you ask me. We were twelve and in the same support group. God, what did she have? Maybe it was her bones? I can’t remember. All I remember is being a confused little boy wondering why I thought that boy on the rugby team was so attractive and being willing when the opportunity arose, any opportunity at all, to kiss a girl. We both wanted to try it, so we did.

Since then, I’ve had two kisses, both with the same boy who I haven’t seen in a year. We never dated. I never called him my boyfriend, and he never called me his. I thought he was special because he wasn’t afraid of falling deathly ill just because he kissed me, but other than that, that was the only emotional pull I felt towards him.

You can’t force yourself to like someone, and you shouldn’t. I’ve always felt extra-pressured to find someone as quickly as possible because I know that any year could be my last. I’m a time-bomb that even I have no idea when I will detonate.

“You may find this surprising,” Dan says, “but I don’t kiss  _ a lot  _ of people.”

“Oh, yeah?”

He giggles. “No, really. I’ve only ever kissed, like, maybe a thousand people, maybe less.”

“Dan.”

“Of every human in history, that’s not a lot of people!”

“Okay, the most famous person you’ve ever kissed.”

“Oh, easy. Da Vinci,” he answers. “And I can’t remember what I even looked like.” His voice is still light, but he changes after a minute of silence. He sighs and pulls back, linking his fingers around my neck. “I’m sorry for disappearing. I shouldn’t have left you. You could have been hurt and—”

I’m quick to interrupt him. We were moving past this. “Hey, no. That had nothing to do with you. And I wasn’t hurt because you  _ were  _ there.”

His eyes are red and puffy, there to remind us of what happened, but his smile, however faint, bleeds through all of it, in a glimmer of optimism and beauty, there to remind us of what has happened since. Through all of this, I’m surprised I didn’t cry. Maybe a few months ago I would have gone home and teared up when I was alone, but I haven’t felt any urge to cry, and believe me: I always feel the urge to cry.

Crying is good. Crying feels good. There’s a misconception that crying is bad because we cry, for the most part, for bad reasons. If I cried because, I don’t know, fucking someone proposed to me, then people would view my tears as endearing and happy, not because they’re tears, but because someone proposed to me and I am reacting. 

It’s okay to cry, and I’ve come to terms with that. Because even though the reason might be bad, the tears aren’t. It’s a release of emotion. Dan knows that—he doesn’t care if he cries in front of me.

“But I should have—fuck, I don’t know.” He runs a hand through his hair. My body already feels weird without some weight of his on me. I almost want to reach out to him, just grab his hand, something to tide me over as I make up for the weeks I’ve wanted this and could only imagine the heat of his skin rather than accept it into myself. “Texted you? Would that have changed anything? At all?”

“Don’t worry about it,” I say. “You can’t change it, and even then, I don’t care. Besides, I actually had my phone confiscated, so.”

He looks confused. “Wait, schools can  _ take  _ your phones? Is that legal?”

“Just don’t text Da Vinci in class and you’ll be fine.”

“Ohhh,” he smiles. “Are you going to be jealous of a guy who’s been dead for almost five-hundred years?”

“Well, that all depends on how good of a kisser he was,” I say. 

The rain’s stopped. I didn’t know Death could control the weather. Before I met him, I didn’t think Death would have any emotion. I wouldn’t have thought he could afford it anymore, if one day he just had to stop because it got to be too much to bear, and maybe the weather was a reflection of that, and he just sends out storms that set trees on fire and kill your power just for the hell of it, because he’d be too numb otherwise. Dan is nowhere near numb. After all these years, he’s still able to feel. It’s inspiring. If he can go for so long, then so can I.

Dan jerks his head back and smiles. “Come on. Let’s get you home. Your mother’s going to freak out.”

I get my bag from the ground, now thoroughly soggy and stomped on under the anarchy of schoolboys. I hold it in front of me and grimace at its appearance. It looks like I dropped it in front of the entrance for a fucking concert and everyone plowed through it. Getting a new bag will be annoying, sure, but I can handle it. Telling Mum that I need a new bag, however…

“We can get you a new bag,” Dan says, appearing at my side.

“I have to empty it out before we lay it to rest.” I lean against his side, laying my head on his shoulder, pouty. “I liked this bag. I’ve had it for three years.”

He wraps a tight arm around my shoulder, affectionately rubbing my arm. “Live and let die.”

“Oh, right. I forgot Death was present for the death of my bag.”

“Throw it in the fucking washer,” he laughs.

“No, I want a new bag. This one’s shit.”

He laughs harder. “Just come on.”

Then he takes my hand and leads me back into the real world. Surprisingly, though, his hand doesn’t leave mine immediately. I’m walking down the street holding his hands. In front of people. Where they can acknowledge it.

“So am I your phone’s wallpaper?” Dan asks when we’re walking past a bank. I tend to watch the pavement when I walk home. I’ve never noticed half of these places.

I smile sheepishly. “Uh, maybe…”

“Where did you get a picture?” he giggles.

When I blush, he grins, and I cover my face with my free hand. “Ugh. God. I took one. Call the police.”

He briefly buries his cheek against my shoulder. “It’s cute, though. I want a picture of you.”

“Ew,” I say.

“Not ‘ew,’ ‘aww.’”

“Okay, I might take one just for you. Or I might just make you have to take one when I’m not looking.”

“That sounded incredibly kinky and slightly illegal.”

“That’s me.”

“No, it’s not,” Dan smiles.

“Okay, fine, it’s not. But it is you.”

He considers this. “True,” he chirps.

We’re still holding hands, and that’s still blowing my mind. We’re still holding hands.


	10. ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was worried i wasn't going to get this out today, but i stayed up really late finishing it bc i go back to school on monday. yikes.

“Donald Trump, a pencil sharpener, and the pencil going into the pencil sharpener. Fuck, marry, kill. Go.”

At this point, I don’t ask how he’s come so far already with modern society when last week he discovered My Chemical Romance and hasn’t shown any signs of knowing they broke up, and you know, I don’t have the heart.

He’s swinging our intertwined hands as we walk. I haven’t asked, but he only started after earning a nasty look from a shop owner peeking out their dusty window (“Phil, what if we draw a penis on the dust? No,  _ two  _ penises. It’ll be fun, I promise.”). I’m honestly glad I have someone here to correct me when I start to second-guess myself. 

I’ve always been extremely impressionable, especially with perceptions on love and what I think is a good relationship. I’ll start to develop my own opinion, but the second someone says  _ no, I disagree,  _ I’m on their side, always. Everyone but me to me is right.

“Okay. I’m marrying Donald Trump,” I start, holding up a finger before Dan can protest, “but then, but  _ then,  _ I’ll kill him.”

He nods. “Yeah. All right. That’s smart, you black widow, but are you fucking the pencil sharpener?”

I rub my face. “God, is it an electric pencil sharpener or one of the ones you have to turn?”

“Do you know how much money you’ve inherited by killing your husband Donald Trump? You can afford the  _ best _ electric pencil sharpener. But, of course, before you kill him, you can fuck him and avoid all pencils and sharp objects.”

“I’m having sex with the pencil sharpener.”

The things that come out of my mouth these days are truly inspiring. I’m waiting for the day someone starts listening at the wrong time. It makes me even more excited for Dan to actually come to school, in fact.

I trust him to come up with some excuse as to why he missed his first day of school. With the story he’s built up, there are a few ways he can go with it, but I just can’t lie. I’m not sure if assisting Death with disguising as a teenage boy at a random shitty school in London would make me an accessory to crime or something, but what am I supposed to tell the police if they ask?

But he starts tomorrow. For real this time. We’ve reached an agreement. Dan has sworn not to leave and I have sworn to not to be so… Phil. Not saying I’m gonna punch a guy in the face if he looks at me weird, but if someone says something directly, very specifically, undeniably to me, then I’ll say something back. Probably. Maybe. I’ll try.

It’s easier for me to say that I’ll do it rather than actually do it, so I didn’t tell Dan that I would absolutely speak up. I told him I’d try. If he finds that disappointing, then he can just get over it. He isn’t me. He doesn’t know what this is like. Dan’s comfortable in his own skin, and if he ever isn’t, he can just change that skin.

This is the same skin I’ll have for the rest of my life, the same body. My pale, flimsy skin and my skinny, weak body.

Dan sighs. “We’re close, right? I know we walked the same distance this morning, but, like, this is so much walking I’ve done today.”

“If I can’t Apparate home, then neither can you.” He leans against my side as we walk, and cautiously I nuzzle my cheek against his upper arm. I’ll never not ask myself if it’s okay. At my own wedding, I’ll ask  _ are you sure? _

Are we dating yet? It’s hard to imagine Death “dating” anyone. A date with death sounds like a horrible romantic comedy (which, in some ways, we are) or an even worse euphemism old people would use amongst each other. But he’s shown that there have been people in the past, people he’s kissed, people he’s shown affection for. I don’t know if he’s ever been in love or if he can truly love.

But the thing is that I don’t feel like a passing fling. No matter what I may think of myself, when it comes to him, I know that I’m not insignificant to him. I won’t be remembered as the equivalent of a one-night stand for humans. There is no  _ or at least I hope not  _ because for this one thing, I am completely confident.

I doubt it’s love yet. Maybe I’ll learn more about his heart as we know each other more, but as of right now, we appear very coupley. Anyone walking past us without any other knowledge would assume we’re together. In fact, I doubt they would even tell that we just had our first kiss. But I don’t want to ask him. That might ruin things. Though I’ve said that before.

When we reach my building, Dan lets go of my hand. I fumble and look at him in a way that would suggest he just slapped me, but then I realize. Right. Walking in the door hand-in-hand with a guy my mother’s never met might be weird for her.

“I don’t have that many friends, so she’ll like you by default,” I assure him. I’ve always wondered if there was a line to be crossed with her. She’s always wanted me to have friends, but would she ever dislike one? It doesn’t quite click with me that I’m already resigning to introducing him as a friend.

We enter the building, and Dan goes straight for the stairs. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I hate lifts and I always think that it’s going to plummet into hell one day while I’m in it, but I’m not going to walk up five flights of stairs.

“Hey, Flash, there’s a method of transportation right here that will take you where you need to go.” I lean my hand beside the pad of buttons and smirk up at him, his foot still placed on the first step and his fingers curled around the railing.

Dan quirks an eyebrow, clearly not impressed by the incredible levitating claustrophobia box. “I didn’t use that thing this morning. Or these things.”

“Well, as someone who has to use these  _ things,  _ I’d appreciate it if you didn’t float to the top and rode the death machine with me.”

That startles a bark of laughter out of him, which yeah, fine, he can have that.

“Is it going to kill everyone or not?” I ask.

He jumps from the one step perhaps a little too hard and bounds back over to me, pushing the down button with his knuckle. “Not that I see. Although this is totally unfair. In the 20s, I had to use stairs. Sometimes. Okay. Other people had to use stairs.”

“ _ Back in my day... _ ” I mock.

The doors slide open and let out a woman who smiles at us as we cross the threshold into the shabby lift. The floor is carpeted and I can see my distorted reflection in the wall I lean against as it lurches and takes off.

“You mean the concept of ‘elevator music’ is a myth?” Dan asks, hanging onto the metal bar for dear life. His knuckles are white around it and his eyes dart around nervously, despite being pretty sure this ten second ride wasn’t destined for imminent death.

I nod and am met with a wave of dizziness as it comes to a stop. Dan is unsteady in his movements, wavering in place and looking nearly nauseous. He hops off as soon as the doors reopen and I follow.

“Maybe the 20s were better,” I note.

He looks at me. “It wasn’t, trust me.”

Yet there had to have been something to entice him into living as a human like this.

I unlock the door and open it. Dan follows me in and stands awkwardly in the doorway, watching me glassy-eyed, seemingly unsure of what he should do in the meantime. He doesn’t even have a bag, I realize when I toss mine down carelessly. How does that look? Suspicious?

“Mum!” I shout. No one calls back or comes out to me (us). It’s kind of strange. I find my way into the kitchen where a note’s stuck to the counter.

_ Hey, went out for a bit. If you get hungry, leftovers are in the fridge. Microwave. 3 mins. Love u!! xoxox _

__ \- Mum _ _

It’s not like I’ve never been alone with Dan before. It’s not a big deal. I shouldn’t feel uneasy or like I’m doing anything wrong here. We’re both responsible, we’ve done this before. But that was before…

He’s still standing there when I walk back in, examining a vase without actually touching it as if in fear he would break it with a single touch. The hodgepodge of flowers need watering, but it looks fine. Everything is relatively clean, as well.

I can’t keep pretending to care about that part.

Dan knows what it looks like. That isn’t important right now. If he wants to judge our on-the-verge-of-wilting flowers, then I won’t be too hurt by it. Right now, the biggest problem is the elephant in the room.

“She’s not home,” I say breathlessly.

“You all right?” he asks, taking a step forward finally.

I nod vigorously and push my fringe to the side. “Mhmm.”

He doesn’t seem convinced, and yeah, it wasn’t very convincing. In fact, if this were a movie, even a shitty actor would do what I just did as a visual cue to spoon-feed the audience, let them know in bright red letters:  **THEY’RE NOT ALL RIGHT.** I’m awful at this.

Dan shifts his eyes slowly. “Are you afraid of me?” It sounds like an actual question. There’s no anger or agitation in his voice; it’s him wanting to make sure I’m okay.

“No. No way. No,” I insist, waving my hands. “It’s just… I could get in trouble.”

Any nosy neighbor could have seen him walk in here. Then it just pops up into conversation one day to my mum.  _ I saw that Phil made a friend. What’s he like? _

“Oh. Right. I thought it was…” Dan trails off, unable to address it. He takes a breath, looks me in the eyes, and tries a different approach. “I’d never do anything—”

“I know, it’s fine.”

It’s so embarrassing how I am. I, fundamentally, am an embarrassment to myself. What’s wrong with me? Of course I know nothing will happen. I trust him, clearly. I’ve proved it on several occasions. At least I think I have. Have I proved my trust? Do people  _ need  _ to prove their trust?

He goes and sits on the couch. “So,” he says. “I’ve already seen your entire flat. What else is there to uncover?”

Be bold and make up for everything. “You.”

Dan nearly laughs. “Me?”

“You know so much about me. Tell me about you.”

I go and take a seat right next to him, our thighs pressed together. Dan leans back against the couch, turned on his side to face me. “You know plenty about me.”

“Hardly. You’ve lived an eternity. There are so many things I don’t know about you.”

He sighs. “I can’t tell if I actually want to discuss this.”

“If you don’t, then that’s okay, but. I’d like to know. Maybe someday.”

“No, I’ll tell you right now what you want to know. Probably. Hm. No. I’ll tell you. Most likely.”

And I draw a blank. I have no idea what specifically I want to know. My mouth forms shapes, but no words exit. He laughs, eye sparkling. I’m not used to boys looking at me like that. In fact, no boy has ever. It still makes me squirm, my toes curling up in my shoes and my hands wringing each other.

“In the 20s, my name was James,” he starts for me. “Like my middle name. Or, fuck, I guess the middle name I  _ chose.  _ When I was… forging files to get into a school. But anyway. I can’t remember my first ever name, of course, but James. I can remember that.”

“Okay, cute. Uh,” I ponder, trying to think up something. “Do you remember the first ever death?”

“Nope,” he answers simply as if not knowing didn’t make him crazy. I feel obligated to remember my first everything.

“Really?”

Dan shrugs. “Must not have been very exciting. And I was kind of a baby. I didn’t look like one, of course, but I was new.”

“That’s so weird to think,” I note. “What have you looked like before?”

I’m more interested in him than the deaths. His life and travels seem so ethereal when you take out of consideration what he is. He hasn’t just been taking lives, he’s been experiencing the world and watching it grow. I find it amazing. He’s amazing.

“Well, most of the time I’m nothing,” he says. It almost sounds sad. “Then other times, I can be a woman, I can be a man. I’ve never been a child. Maybe I’ll give that a try someday, though that would be awful and creepy as  _ fuck.  _ I like to be pretty.”

“Obviously,” I add in.

He grins, acknowledging me. “And, well. The last time, I was… me. I was this.”

I frown. “You mean, like, that face?”

“This face, this body, this hair color, this voice, yes. I don’t know why it came back to me.”

We go quiet. Dan stares off into nothing, studying the wall with a reflective look in his eyes. I just sit there. “But you planned it?”

“No.” His voice is quiet, his smile is gentle. “He just… appeared again. I figured it must have been for a reason.” He looks at me pointedly.

“Oh,” I say. “Well, I would pick your face again, too.”

Dan laughs. “Glad you think so.” He sits straighter, his face becoming more lively again. “This has fucking  _ drained me.  _ I promise we’ll talk more about me another time.”

“Wait, just one more,” I wince rather than say. He looks open for it, not offended or annoyed, so I go for it. “I know you… kissed Da Vinci and all, and he was the most famous, but who was the most… I don’t know how to put it. Who was your greatest love? I guess.”

He smiles softly. “Another time,” he whispers.


	11. eleven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (this chapter is really short, but it gets the job done, imo)
> 
> okie-dokie, i did some planning, and as it stands, there will be 23 chapters. the plot’s really about to kick into motion, and i am pumped! i really, really want to update consistently every week for the rest of the fic, and because school this year is already looking… bleak, i might bump the usual saturday to sunday, but idk.

Mum still isn’t back.

I’ve been pacing the floors for hours, tracing my footsteps over the same four feet of hardwood in what feels less like a circle and more like a passage into insanity. I don’t expect there to be a different result if I walk to the door and back one more time, but it’s almost like I expect it to help somehow, like I won’t have to do anything and this will resolve itself.

“Should I call someone? The police?”

It wasn’t until the sun set that I started to get worried. A jittery feeling settled in my stomach and a vehement voice in my head kept warning me that something was wrong. I fell asleep in fear that something was wrong, but still hoping somehow that she would be there in the morning before I left for school.

“I don’t know anything about this,” Dan admits. “Has she ever done this?”

“No,” I say emphatically. Of course not. Something could happen to me, and that’s what she fears. She doesn’t like to leave me for longer than two hours at a time, as a rule. I could go into some kind of fit or not be able to breathe and need to go to the hospital.

Dan looks at a complete loss. I guess I wouldn’t know what to say, either. I mean, you go over to your friend’s house to chill and then his mother goes fucking missing.

“I—I’m barely  _ eighteen _ ,” I stutter. My birthday was only two months ago, almost exactly.. We never do anything special. Mum knows that not having a party that involves inviting friends I don’t have and family I haven’t seen in months is a present unto itself, but I got some money, some cupcakes. But my mind is coming to the bold conclusion that I’m on my own now. I’ll never see her again.

Dan places his fingers on the bridge of his nose and takes a deep breath. “Tell the police if it makes you more comfortable.”

It’s not really about what makes me comfortable. It’s what I should do, I think. Where would I even go? Could they scavenge up my dad wherever he is? Would they?

I sigh and snatch my phone from my dresser. “No, I’m going to try and call one more time first.”

I’ve left her five texts and tried calling six times, only leaving voicemails the first two times. Finding the number is muscle memory, and my fingers move incredibly fast. The phone is against my ear the second my finger is lifted from the call button.

One ring.

Two rings.

Three rings.

No one picking up, are they?

Voicemail.

It’s not even her voice telling me to speak to her. An automated machine walks me through it. I already know how it works, and it’s not going to make a difference either way. Dejectedly, I let my hand fall as if the phone were made of lead.

“Maybe she’ll be back today,” Dan says. He’s trying, and I appreciate it.

I shake my head. “I don’t know. Come on. Let’s go to school.”

He sits there like he doesn’t know how to speak, but I’m already shouldering the bag I’ve yet to replace and walking out the door, straightening my tie. Dan wasn’t even dressed yet. He can have it magically on in seconds—it’s fine if I leave him for two seconds, he won’t be late. In fact, as soon as I press the down button on the lift, he comes pushing out the door and rushing to my heels.

How did it happen like this? Just yesterday, the biggest concern of mine was if Dan was my boyfriend or not, and now I might be an orphan. Maybe it’s punishment. Punishing me for doing something I wasn’t supposed to, something wrong.

No. I’ve already decided that the kiss was not wrong. This is just bad luck. I’m made of the stuff.

But I can’t just sit here and expect that everything is going to be okay. The truth is that she probably won’t be home when I get back, and I’ll call the police, and then… and then whatever happens, happens.

We stand beside each other in silence. I really do wish elevator music wasn’t just a myth, in moments like these, but at the same time, I don’t feel like talking. I can’t do it right now, any of it. God, I chose the wrong time to kiss him.

After the doors drift apart once again, we walk out in a synchronized fashion. I take a step, he takes a step, and no one is ahead or behind. Even the sounds of our shoes against the floor click in harmony, the only sound filling up the empty air in the building. London will heal our silence-based madness. The city will blare in my ears, and I will be able to think again without having to produce any sound myself.

Dan isn’t forcing himself to speak, either, I guess. I always took him as a person who would just talk to fill the void, to ease their nerves, to calm everyone else down; just a constant stream of words pouring from the mouth. But he knows when to be reserved. The way I figure it, he’s been alone more than he’s been with people.

Sure enough, the traffic and the chatter flood my brain. It’s comforting, in a way, to know that the world hasn’t stopped, that my problems are my own and everyone I walk past is dealing with their own crisis.

I’m not completely certain how I should be walking with Dan. Holding hands seems inappropriate for the time being, but I want to feel his touch. A simple brush of his skin would steady me above all else. It only makes sense that I would want to be held and kissed and doted on in a time like this, but after ignoring him for the better part of a night, it feels selfish to even ask.

“I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding,” Dan whispers. If he weren’t walking so close to me, I wouldn’t have heard him. Again: appreciation.

“Thanks. For the effort.” That sounded sarcastic. “Really. I appreciate it.”

It’s the first time I’ve said the words aloud, but I still end up feeling like it’s the only words I know and I just keep repeating them. I have to make sure this will be the only time I tell him that. Otherwise, it will lose all meaning. Christ. Words losing meaning because they’re said too much? Have I become  _ that _ person overnight? I’ve never believed in that. Say I love you as much as you want.

This is a little different, though, I think.

But Dan hasn’t told me she’s dead, which is all he can really do in this situation, so I guess maybe things could be okay. Whether they’ll be normal or not has yet to be determined, but okay and normal are two different things.

“You’ve got this—eternal wisdom thing,” I point out. “Care to bless me with some?”

His face comes to a stop and he looks like he’s just been exposed. His eyes grasp for something to say, I can tell. And every time he might open his mouth to speak, he disguises it as a deep breath.

“I’m really not that wise,” he finally admits. “Not that shocking, probably, but I really don’t know what to tell you. I’m better at actions and comfort, so if you need any of that…”

He must be assuming I don’t.

“I do. But not yet.”

I can’t accept that right now. I can’t let him kiss me and welcome the idea that something bad has already gone wrong, wave the white flag, but I also can’t bring any weakness in. Dan is definitely a weakness of mine.

“Not really sure what that means.”

“Me either.”

There’s no more talking for the rest of the way to school. We are forever destined to never get this part right. The world can tolerate me, but Death going to school is something it just can’t allow to happen without fucking up.

We can’t have these simple, mundane things together. We can have an unplanned kiss that catches both us and the world off-guard, but as soon as that moment’s gone, something will come in the way and prevent us from going further. Maybe the world is trying to tell us something.

The sounds of the city are very different to those of a school. I love that noise; this noise makes me even more nervous than before. The kids scream for no reason, and I have to turn and make sure no one’s getting kidnapped, no one’s going missing.

Dan and I walk through the doors together and enter the crowded hallway. Once we’re surrounded by other, normal teenagers speaking the way they do, Dan must be inspired by it all because he starts the conversation up again.

“I have a flat,” he says. I look at him and wait for more details. He seems to be waiting for me to interact back. I raise my eyebrows impatiently and hold my hands out.  _ And?  _ “Well, it’s not really my flat, but I stay there. I  _ can _ stay there. We can. You know, if this takes longer than expected.”

As appealing as squatting in a place that someone probably already owns sounds, I’ll likely have to go to some distant relative’s house outside of London. I don’t really have any family that lives in the city; Mum was the one who got away. Besides, I thought we were supposed to be optimistic. Mum will miraculously be home when we get back. Has he changed his mind already?

“Is that legal?” I ask, somewhat monotonously. I don’t think I actually care. It’s mechanical of me to ask these things because at one point, I did care.

He shifts his eyes and looks for a way to say  _ laws don’t apply to me  _ without sounding like a complete ass.   


“Laws don’t apply to you,” I say for him.

“Uh, yeah, pretty much,” he replies sheepishly.

I give him a shrug. I’m not trying. I can’t even give myself that much. “I mean, as long as we’re not sneaking around when no one’s home—”

“No one lives there,” he informs me defensively. The place is important to him. I see it in his eyes. I could ruin that. Housing a sad eighteen-year-old has a way of draining the life from a given area, not to mention the whole missing mother thing that really puts a damper on the mood.

“Well, if things start to go bad.”

“Why are you so sure they will?” he asks.

I lead him into a classroom, my classroom, to be exact, and I don’t know what his is, but I just really want to sit down. “What should I be thinking? Or, no, you’re not wise, I forgot.”

Dan sighs. I don’t mean to be getting angry at him now. It’s just hard. Already. I don’t think it’s going to get better from here. “I think you should be thinking that I’m trying to help.”

I have to bite back a  _ well, you’re not.  _ That wouldn’t even be the truth. It’s my first instinct, I guess. I know he’s trying to help. He’s trying to help me more than I’m trying to help me, which is unbelievably sad. I never thought I’d be this person, and I never thought the change would be overnight.

“Just… don’t tell me how to feel, okay? It’s not your mother.”

He sits down in the desk beside me urgently, ready to prove whatever point he’s trying to. “I know. I understand what you’re going through—”

“No, you don’t,” I interrupt with a scoff. “You don’t even have a family.”

It was a low blow. Dan seems shocked that would even come out of my mouth. Hurt, even, to a certain extent. I get it. I was supposed to be apart of that family. I still want to be. He picks up his bag and stands up. I nearly stop him, but he should go before I do anything dumber.

“So I can have my seat now?” the guy who sits in the desk Dan was in chimes in. I don’t know how long he’s been standing there, how much he heard. I guess it wouldn’t matter because he wouldn’t know what it was about anyway.

Dan blinks at him, his usual confidence shook. He looks like a frightened, dazed deer. “All yours. Sorry,” he says quietly and starts to walk out. He won’t have any idea where he’s going. That was supposed to be where I helped him.

The guy sits down and looks at me. “Trouble in paradise, eh?”

“Shut up!” I hear myself screech. Is that really my voice? It can be that loud? “Shut the fuck up!”

Dan turns around, the teacher turns around, the scattered five or so who are already in the class turn around, the guy nearly falls out of his seat. The wide eyes all burn a hole into me, pressing me for some type of explanation that I can’t give them.  _ He talked to me, so I yelled at him. _

That’s probably not what Dan meant.

“Jesus,” the guy mumbles.

I don’t hope Dan will somehow be proud of me for that. He’s probably pretty angry at me right now, rightfully so. But maybe he’ll give me some kind of look. Nope.

He just walks away again.


	12. twelve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~when you note how you want to update on time and are a week late literally the next chapter~~
> 
>  
> 
> 1\. i suck. i know. but school sucks more. blame them for the lateness (and, yeah, me too)  
> 2\. i’ve never actually been involved in a police investigation, so i’ve tried my best here, but i can’t promise it will be 100% accurate. in fact, it probably is super far from accurate.  
> 3\. since i switched to a [completely new tumblr blog](https://ghostphil.tumblr.com) (that’s another self-promo please follow me my only follower is a porn blog), i decided i would just change my user (again) so that it matches. i changed my icon, too, for, like, a day, but i missed my mycroft too much.

“When was the last time you saw your mother?”

If anyone else without previous backstory saw this, they’d think I was a suspect in her murder. They’re not treating me like Worried Son Phil Lester—instead they’re scrutinizing me, staring me down with uncompromising gazes, each similar to the other. Every word I say, it seems, forever ingrains itself in their memory, and they’re just waiting for me to slip up.

I know I’m being dramatic. Just by the way.

My mind has an automatic switch that tells me all authority hates me. And if they don’t hate me, then they think they know something I don’t, or that they’re better than me somehow because they’re older and technically above me.

For the third time, “The morning I left for school.”

There are two officers in the room with me. A man and a woman, both roughly of the same middle age and neither of them very welcoming in looks. It’s their job, I guess, to not make me feel comfortable (right?), and I figure they’re someone’s parent, wife, or husband, so they get it.

A detective and his team swirl around the flat for “evidence of a struggle,” I’m assuming, although I would like to think that if there were any blood splatters on the wall or broken glass, I would have noticed. Still. I’ll let them do their job. I’m just the weird, almost too weird, son who hasn’t completely earned their trust yet.

“Did you notice anything strange in her behavior?” the woman asks me.

“No, not at all,” I say honestly.

Dan’s somewhere around here. In a mutual, unspoken agreement, we decided that it was for the best that he wasn’t around for this part. Or the rest of the parts. In fact, if the cops and Dan could just stay on two completely different planes for the entirety of this investigation, that would be great.

Last time Dan was on Earth, they were still hanging people. God knows what he would say or if he would even get it. He’s been watching, observing us evolve from his place where his body ceases to exist, but he hasn’t been here in it. It’s a risk we can’t take.

But really, I have nothing to worry about. They won’t be able to tell I’m lying because I’m not lying. I don’t have anything to lie about.

“Where are you staying for the time being?”

Except that.

“My aunt. She doesn’t live too far away.”

I’d rather no one ever ask me why I lied about something that would so easily be truth if I made it that way. I do have an aunt, and she lives in Lancashire, which in hindsight, maybe is kind of far away, but I’ll be in London the whole time. I hope no one questions her.

Most of my family knows already. I’m thankful we’re such a reclusive family, sticking to our one households and not caring what the rest do. With every offering to take me in, I had to lie to them individually. The whole thing is bound to blow up in my face.

It’s spiraling into a web of lies only a suspect would get themselves entangled in, and I don’t know why I’m putting myself in this situation.

My paranoia spikes when they don’t ask any further questions, only nod, arms crossed, like  _ why is this kid even bothering?  _ I might actually go insane before this is all over. Tell-Tale Heart and all that, except I didn’t do anything wrong. But that’s what the narrator thought, too, right?

I’ve answered everything I can now. My use to them is expired. In other words, can I go?

The woman looks at me for a few agonizing seconds. What did she say her name was? They gave me their last names, both of them. Bradley and Cobb, I think, and she’s probably Bradley. I get a feeling in my subconscious that tells me she doesn’t like me. Cobb seems indifferent, but she. She doesn’t like me.

A member of the detective’s team walks up to where we’re standing by the door, looking literally and apologetically empty-handed. His hands clasp onto each other, as if unsure what to do with them if they aren’t filled with a plastic bag of a hair or some blood sample.

“There’s nothing,” he announces. “We’ve torn the place apart.”

I know. If it didn’t look like there was a struggle before, it certainly looks like someone fought back now.

Am I supposed to hear them talk about this? He isn’t looking at me; he’s ignoring my existence completely. I’ve never heard a detective accept defeat this early on in movies or television. Although I don’t blame them. Because of how it looks.

Not a kidnapping. Not murder. Abandonment.

They don’t know my mother. She wouldn’t do that. No. I can convince them before they try to convince me.

The two cops glance at me, share a look, and lead the detective from me so they can quietly discuss whatever paranoid thoughts are going through my head. If they can’t say it in front of me, maybe my paranoia is justified.

I stand in the middle of the room like I’m lost in my own home. The team slides and brushes past me as I try to make myself smaller and smaller.

When they walk back to me, they all share the sympathetic look the detective had when he first showed up with no evidence. I know what’s coming.

“We’re gonna wrap this up for today. We’ll let you know when we find anything,” Cobb says at the same time as my mind does.

I feel mildly sick, but I smile and jerk my head in what was supposed to be a nod. “Right. Thank you.”

Everyone clears out, the flat still in shambles. They tried to tidy it up (did they know someone would still be staying here?), but almost everything that was misplaced is still misplaced, just conveniently moved out of the way.

My shoes echo against the floor as I walk to nowhere in particular. I pick some things up along the way, put them where they actually go. I settle the crooked pictures on our fake fireplace, although I could have sworn there was another picture of me that’s not there anymore.

I’ve never beckoned Dan before, and I’m not sure if I plan to try it. I cross my arms and tread lightly across the floor. I have decided I don’t like the sound of my shoes being the only sound.

“Dan?” I call out, if only to allow there to be some other noise.

He can’t hear me if he’s not here, of course. I guess it doesn’t work that way. I pull my phone out of my pocket right as he suddenly materializes in front of me.

“Did you hear me?” I ask, the phone still in hand, no new texts, no missed calls.

He looks at me. “What?”

“Nevermind.” I turn on the table lamp by the couch and don’t bother with lighting up the rest of the flat. Any other situation, and the place would be bursting with light at this time in the evening. The second I became inconvenienced while doing my homework or Mum when she’s reading, like the  _ Phantom of the Opera  _ overture, everything comes on. 

This, however, is a one table lamp situation. It illuminates enough of Dan’s face to see the solemn expression on his face that he’s become affixed to these past few days. Everything between us has come to a complete standstill, it seems. We’re under the impression that anytime we try and move, something bad will happen.

“When did they leave?” he asks, pushing a plant on the coffee table to the place he was used to seeing it.

“A few minutes ago,” I shrug. “They, uh, think I’m leaving.”

Dan looks mildly alarmed, whether at the prospect of me leaving or me hinting that I lied to the police. “You aren’t…?”

I wilt into the couch and close my eyes, taking in an atmospheric quiet that unsettles me. “I told them I was staying with my aunt. I’m not.”

“Why don’t you just actually stay with your aunt?” he questions.

My eyes open, and he’s sitting next to me, leaning forward on the cushion and focusing on my eyes. I sigh. “I just—I don’t want to leave. I don’t know. It’s stupid and could— _ is _ —going to get me into trouble, but I really, really, want to stay here. For now.”

There’s nothing wrong with my aunt. I barely know her, but from the few occasions we’ve managed to coincide in going to, she seems like a nice woman. Mum never talks about having an evil sister or anything and doesn’t seem to have any traumatic  _ Orphan _ experiences in childhood, so I’d be fine. Dan can follow me anywhere, so that’s not a problem, either.

I don’t know what the problem is, what  _ my  _ problem is. Someone’s going to ask my aunt where I am and she’s going to assume I’m missing, too.

Is it too late? I think I may have actually screwed things up for good. God, I don’t even know if my aunt  _ knows.  _ Almost inevitably, they will get into contact with her, ask her some questions, ask her about me.

Dan moves closer. Covers my hand with his. I take it and squeeze. We haven’t had this kind of contact since, well, the first time it happened.

With his other hand, he brushes his fingers against the hem of my shirt at my hip and draws me in, his head tilted, my lips parted. I wrap an arm around him, my fingers curling on top of his shoulder. Our foreheads nearly touch, and it’s so warm and intimate and necessary.

His hand rests lightly on my neck as he kisses me, his lips possessing a tenderness that I hadn’t been able to imagine before. My own lips work against his, chasing after them, in need of him. He’s magnetic. He’s something I thought I would never get or deserve.

I slide my fingers along the back of his hair. “I love you.”

Our lips are close enough to touch as I speak, close enough to feel the breath be sucked back into Dan’s mouth as his eyes grow. It’s surprising, but it also isn’t. I think he’s used to saying it first, a control thing of who can come in. After all, it isn’t ideal to fall in love with death.

Now he closes his eyes, both hands placed low at my sides. I panic. He hasn’t moved away, hasn’t backed away in disgust, but he’s not saying it back. Not saying anything. His hands are still there, though, warm through my shirt.

And after a few deep, contemplative breaths: “I love you, too.”

The eyes are still closed.

I get it. It’s a big commitment to make to a boy you will eventually have to take the life of. It’s the age-old trope of complicated love. I age, he doesn’t. I deteriorate, he doesn’t. But I die, he helps.

There’s sincerity in his voice, and that’s what counts. We are in love right now, and we shouldn’t be thinking about a future that can’t exist when we’ve got this right now.

Dan moves into my chest and grasps me. His voice lingers in my mind, his words not completely registering. I barely noticed myself telling him, so for him to love me back seems… otherworldly, like a fairytale I made up in my head.

But he loves me. He loves me back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my big i-love-you scenes are always awkwardly-written i’m sorry


	13. thirteen

There are words on this paper, and I am supposed to be processing them.

At this point in the year, does it matter what I do? Another month and I’ll be gone, taking a gap year before I start university, a recent addition I decided would be good for me a week ago. Up until then, I figured I was going to be a constant _go_ person. After all, how much time do any of us actually have? But the same argument can also be used for why I need a break.

But then I also don’t suppose I have much an option now. I should stay until everything gets sorted. Only after will I take that leap into the real world, if I haven’t had my share of “the real world” already.

In my English class, I’ve got one more big project, which should be on my mind right now. This late in the term, I don’t think anyone is fully devoted to school anymore, projects and coursework taking a backseat to all your other upcoming responsibilities because you know in just weeks, they will be insignificant, and those responsibilities are going to become everyday life, your everyday world. The real world.

I’m not so distracted, however, that my mind can’t stop every so often and resent the entire concept of partner projects in a fleeting break from my other, more pressing thoughts. When I look around and see everyone talking too loud, _screaming,_ and honestly and perhaps rightfully not thoroughly caring about this project, I’m reminded of it, and my mind can drift there and take a catnap before going back into orbit.

Partners were assigned. This can either be a good thing (as good as partner projects can be) or a bad thing. But then, so can choosing your own partner. The only way I can win is if group work is optional, and it wasn’t an option. Even the school is getting tired at this point because we were basically paired with whoever we were sat beside from the start.

My partner has never missed a day of school since he was eight years old. Yet as I look around the room and towards the door, there’s no sign of him anywhere. Pros: everything—are you kidding me? Cons: okay, maybe not everything, he does have some of the work with him in his bag.

I’m perfectly fine with him laying out, and I’m sure he is, too. I mean, Jesus, you don’t take a sick day in ten years, that would turn me into an actual zombie. Mostly because I would probably be dead (not even kidding).

Missing a partner and about seven chapter summaries I’ll have to manage to cough up within the next hour, I know what I should be doing. Everyone knows what I should be doing, everyone should be screaming at me for not focusing, but does anyone blame me?

They— _they_ being mostly teachers and some particularly sweet-types—keep telling me I’m strong. What is that word to them? What about me makes me strong today but weak yesterday? I know in some ways I am strong. The definition can be that simple. But it never is. Is it that I’m still here? That I’m not off where I told the _police_ I will be? Or is it about something else, that I’m not off wherever Dan was supposed to take me that night?

Wherever I am and wherever I’m supposed to be suddenly blankets me in support and warmth, and I don’t know how to respond. No one has bothered me since it got out that my mother was missing. No one’s asking questions, either, which is the only thing that feels like bliss.

When I’m not in an uncomfortable spotlight of _strength,_ I revert to invisibility. That feels more genuine than the words of support and delayed admiration that I didn’t ask for or quite frankly deserve. I’m a kid who was born with bad luck that never gets a payoff from it. Or, at least, that’s what they think.

They don’t know about Dan and I. They don’t know the comfort, the real comfort, you receive from feeling his skin under your sheets when you wake up. Soft, soft, sweet-smelling skin pressed against yours. And he’s awake; he’s been awake all night. He doesn’t sleep, but he wouldn’t leave you. So he stays and gets to feel your skin all night.

They don’t know about that love, that shared consolation of one broken soul and another who refuses to take that soul away, only promises love you and promises to mend it in other methods that words have no use for.

And I don’t _want_ them to know about that love. We become selfish with the things they could take away from us. They could never have us. No matter what truth they could ever uncover about him, about me, nothing could tear me from him. And I would do anything to make sure nothing tore him from me. My inherent selfishness comes back then.

My page is blank. I have half the materials I need. I’d be given a break and a sympathetic smile if I didn’t do it. For a moment I consider it. I don’t have to rise above everything, do I? But no. I’ll try to do it, and if it’s awful… well, I’ll get a break for that, too.

I’ll admit that I skimmed the entire book, and that was before Dan or any of this. Just because a novel is classic doesn’t mean it’s going to have a bigger impact on me as a person than a contemporary novel is. Really, the opposite is true. At least I can understand the modern novel and, hey, gay people actually exist.

Someone jiggles the door handle and follows it with two firm knocks upon realizing it’s locked. Assuming it’s someone coming back from the bathroom or coming in late, I don’t turn around, instead forcing myself to write down three words: _In chapter fourteen…_

The teacher steps out, some heads turn. Any excuse to not be doing this right now, I guess. My head turns simultaneously with the rest of the class and oh. That’s why people are staring.

A cop stands with his hands resting on the back of his hips as my English teacher seems to be needling him for details that he doesn’t receive. There’s a feeling in the pit of my stomach that just _knows._

“Phil?”

It knew.

Not even the excuse of having to churn out pages of bullshit is going to be able to spare me from this. I panic—my mouth goes dry, I instantly feel like I’m going to throw up, my blood rushes to my ears. This could be about anything. Why am I at school if I’m staying with my aunt who doesn’t live in the city? God, I fucked up. I slowly rise from my seat and walk out, staring at a spot on the floor and holding my elbow.

This is a different cop. He’s older, arrogant, has a permanent smirk. Probably has some bigoted son who’s doing well in uni right now. But I’m probably being too harsh.

“Mr. Lester?” he asks. I wonder if that _Mr._ they always tack on is an inside joke. It’s not the kind of sympathy I’d become accustomed to these past few days. Something’s different about this cop; he doesn’t feel bad for me at all. Isn’t that what I’ve wanted all my life?

I could be selfish, which everyone is, to a certain extent, or the response that sits with me is an actual omen of something bad.

“Yes,” I answer. The door shuts behind me, and we’re isolated in the hallway together, my voice bouncing off the walls and echoing back to me.

He’s already walking, flashing a half-smile at me. “Come with me. Might be more comfortable in an office.”

Fantastic. I’m receiving a police escort to the office. I’m sure some of them think I’m crazy, think I’m guilty of something. He only confirms that those people exist. I stay six inches behind him, taking one step for every two steps he takes.

We get there, and I’m sat in a chair and told to wait. I kick my legs back and forth and fidget my hands. There’s a retro-looking clock hanging on the wall that I watch the seconds literally tick by on, the faint noise the only thing I can hear apart from muffled voices on the inside of the room.

He’s interrogating someone else? No one else knows anything; everyone knows how little friends I have. The only person—

“Dan.”

He’s slipping out of the door, but hears my voice, blinks, and turns around.

I signal a universal hand gesture of _what the fuck_ when he doesn’t say anything about what this whole thing is. For all I know, they could have found out about his forged records and his only defense is that he’s Death and Death has no parents.

“He asked me about your mum and some kid I don’t know,” Dan says quietly. Straightening his legs, he tilts and checks if the cop is coming. He takes a few steps closer. “I think they’re seeing if our stories match up.”

That’s… odd. “I never mentioned you,” I assure him.

“I know, but it’s okay. Just say—”

The door handle clicks, and the cop steps out again, half-leaning out of the doorframe. Dan immediately turns and starts walking, trying to convincingly look like it’s taken him longer than ten seconds to leave. When he’s gone, I’m beckoned into the room.

I don’t know who offered their office up for rent, but he’s obviously free to use it, even if I’m missing school or my entire English class thinks I’m a murderer. He doesn’t sit—he wanders over to the window and looks out of it. I take a seat in a chair that looks cushy but actually feels like a rock in front of a large wooden desk.

“Why was… he… in here?” Separating language. He must already know we know each other, but on the off chance he doesn’t, I might as well lead him away from Dan. For whatever reason he would want to include him.

“Oh, we just needed a statement. He was with you, right?” I nod, gripping the shiny wood arms of the chair. The cop quirks an eyebrow at me. “You all right?”

I swallow. “Yes.” My voice sounds squeezed out.

“What’s your relationship?”

Oh. That’s… a good one. “I don’t know” might be a weird answer. Did he ask Dan that?

“Uh, well, we’re kind of like a couple…”

“Kind of?” He smiles and whistles. “He just said you’re his boyfriend.”

He’s smiling at my nauseous face. The whole thing about seeing how we match up I’m failing badly already. “What does this have to do with my mother?” I fire back, staying calm and as not snappish as possible.

Finally he comes and sits down, and I no longer have to crane my neck up to look at him. “How did she feel about it?”

“She didn’t know.” He’s not getting details on our first kiss. I’d let him draw his own conclusions, but something tells me it’s a bad idea. Someone’s already letting him do that, or he wouldn’t be asking about Dan.

He claps his hands together by his nose, staring me down and processing. “And how are things in Mr. Poole’s class?”

I shake my head. “Sorry?”

“You’ve had a few rough days in there. Not too long ago, you apparently had an outburst towards another student.”

I doubt Dan told him that. Who else has this guy talked to, and what the fuck is he trying to prove? There’s something deeper here, yet it’s not that deep. Shut-the-fuck-up kid has nothing to do with anything—he’s just trying to get me in more trouble.

“I was upset.”

He glances at a sheet of paper, not acknowledging my side of the story. “Now Mr. Graham has quite the record of absences, but Noah Talbot? He hasn’t missed a day of school in ten years. Yet there hasn’t been a parent call, not a doctor’s note. Nothing.”

There’s the kid Dan didn’t know that he was asking about. I’ve already established that he deserved the day off. Just like Jacob Graham deserved to be told to shut the fuck up. “Well, I don’t know Noah. We just sat near each other and worked on a project.”

“But Dan had an incident with him three days ago.”

I frown. “He never mentioned it to me.”

Never mentioned knowing him at all, actually. In fact, told me the opposite. We’ve got enough lies, I think, and the last person we should be keeping them from is each other. I grow angrier and angrier, hiding it easily in my face. At least I think. Who knows what he sees?

The cop leans back. “Huh. I thought he would.”

It’s becoming more and more obvious what he’s trying to turn this into. A vengeful Bonnie and Clyde. All the other, confirmed murder cases must not be interesting enough. My mother’s not even dead.

“He didn’t,” I establish again.

“Well,” he clicks a pen, “you may go back to class. We’ll be in touch.”

I’m sure of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i feel like mentioning the lateness is becoming redundant and annoying, so this will probably be the last time i acknowledge it. i have the rest of the story laid out, as i’ve said, but it’s a matter of actually having time to write it, and the ridiculous amount of homework i have every fucking night slows down the process like a lot


	14. fourteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for almost 100 kudos!! <33
> 
> tw // brief panic attack

Dan shakes me awake at three in the morning, looking guilt-laden and panicked.

I blink into focus, his expression becoming more apparent as I adjust to the dark. Most of him is shrouded in the shadows created by my curtains, but he’s kneeling by my bed, a hand still rested on my arm, trembling.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

We haven’t spoken since the stint at school. I’ve been trying to figure out how to ask him why he lied, what else he’s lied about. I’m half-tempted to be blunt. Yet I’m not mad, somehow. Confused, hurt, filled with dread. But there’s no anger.

I think the discussion itself has the potential to get me mad. There’s a part of me that believes he would have a good reason to lie to me. He’d  _ have  _ to. He told me he loved me, he told that cop he was my boyfriend.

But there’s another part, the untrusting part of me that came with me as a package deal when I was born, that creates a situation for every reason, all equally horrible. He wants to hurt me, he’s planning on hurting me, he doesn’t like me anymore and doesn’t care if he lies. The other part is more rational, and because it’s so much more desirable, that should be the one I believe. But the bad part takes over.

I push myself into a sitting position, tucking my legs under the rest of me and waiting for him to speak. I fumble with the glasses by my bedside, putting them on, knowing they barely make a difference in this lack of light.

Dan struggles to speak. “I… I don’t…” He sucks in his breath between his teeth, and I sense that he’s nearly in tears. “Your aunt’s dead.”

There is no other sound. He cries. I blink. “What?”

This isn’t possible. I was supposed to be there. She hadn’t seen me since I was six. Suddenly I can remember the day with remarkable clarity. She was in London for Christmas, and she was wearing a purple dress, and she got me a pair of shoes that were a size too small.

She overestimated how tiny I was, which, at that point, I was tiny, but not that tiny. And fuck, they were cool shoes. I tried my best to make them fit, even weeks after Christmas, presumably waiting to wake up one day and have smaller feet. I could never connect her to anything but the woman who gave me too small shoes at Christmas during my childhood.

Dan doesn’t want to repeat himself, I can tell. But I need to hear it again, just so I know it’s real, so I know there isn’t some misunderstanding.

“She just—she just  _ died,  _ I… I didn’t see it coming. I should have.”

I squint. “I don’t think anyone saw it coming—”

“No.  _ I  _ should have.” Right. I forgot who he was. I’m… I must still be sleeping. I’m disoriented, confused, losing touch with reality. “I try and keep track of your family the best I can, but then she just fucking died.”

I rub my face and inhale. “How?”

He shakes his head. “In her sleep. I don’t even know the specifics. There’s something wrong with me—” His voice cracks, fear bleeding through.

“This is because of me.” My voice is flat, calm.

Dan sits on my bed. “No,” he answers as if I were asking a question. I notice that he’s still crying and I’ve yet to shed a tear. 

Out of nowhere, I’m seized by a burning in my throat. I feel my hands start to shake, and I become more and more disassociated with my surroundings. It’s me sitting in a dark room with nothing but the sounds of my ragged breath to listen to.

My throat feels like it’s closing, making my hyperventilation in shorter spurts of breath, with less and less support behind them. Not a lot of coherent thoughts go through my mind as this is happening. It’s a stream of words and phrases, jumbled up and relentless.

A pair of hands grip mine at my knees, but the feeling is distant, almost numb. Still, I manage to intertwine my fingers with his, however weakly. My fingers are loose around his, and his remain tight. He’s still crying.

I don’t know how long I’ve been crying, but the tears feel like they’ve been there for a long time, and more are continuing to fall. I can’t control it, any of it.

“Phil,” Dan whispers, his voice right at my ear. “You have to breathe.”

In all of this, I seem to have forgotten how. Instead of following his advice, I instinctively squirm away from him, while at the same time my mind asked me what I was doing and  _ why.  _ Dan moves back even further than I did and holds his hands up. I still can’t remember how to breathe.

It’s so stupid. Remember to breathe properly. Have I ever breathed properly? There’s breathing well and breathing well by Phil standards. When this happens, it becomes even harder, and I feel like I might die. But I guess I won’t. He’s not going to allow that. Things will become even worse for the people who aren’t me.

A new fit of tears and hyperventilation erupts, my heartbeat pounds in a rush to my ears, and my entire body quakes.

Dan sits at the foot of the bed, his hands fidgeting on his lap. I think that deep down he knows that this is his fault, that if he had let me die that night, all of this could have been avoided. He hadn’t loved me then. He hadn’t even needed to wake me up. Someone just died this very second, and he isn’t thinking of them; he’s here thinking of me.

It could have been anyone else he fell in love with. No matter who it was, whether it was me or someone healthy, we would have to die. He knows this. But if he had just not shown up.

“What are five things you can see?” His voice barely reaches me.

In order to see anything, I have to lift my head from my knees. Even when I do so, it’s dark. I see him. He looks lost, exhausted. Defeated. He’s been trying so hard for so long to get me to this point.

It takes a few long seconds for my voice to find me, and when it does, it shakes and cracks. “I—I see you. And the mattress, and the dresser, and the mirror, and the pictures on the wall.”

Dan nods. He seems to be calming himself down, too. “Can you do touch?”

“I don’t… I don’t know. There isn’t much…”

He moves on swiftly. “Then keep going with sight. Or smell. Sounds, even. There’s traffic outside, listen.”

“No. Come here.” I’m holding out my arms like a child. I suppose I am incredibly young to him. Still, he doesn’t hesitate to come closer.

I let my knees flatten against the bed, and he crawls over them, falling into my arms. My hand is lost in his hair, and he holds my shoulders. I try not to hold him too tightly.

“We’ll get out of here,” he promises me and presses a kiss to my jaw. “Tell the police you’re staying with me and we’ll try and figure this out.”

I remember him mentioning his home, and agree that it would be a good idea to leave this place for a while. It hasn’t felt like home in a long time.

We must be leaving sometime tomorrow. In the time until then, we will be here. For now, with the time we have nothing to do with besides occupy it, we’ll stay here, and we’ll wonder together what’s going on because alone not knowing is overwhelming and terrifying, but together the feeling lessens.

“What does any of this mean?” I ask, occupying the time. It’s tempting to leave now. At least then we’ll have something to do instead of go out of our minds.

Dan shakes his head. I expect words to follow, but none do. It speaks more to me than anything he could have said.

Eventually somehow, I find it in me to fall asleep. Sleep came and forced us to, it feels more like. If you ever refuse to sleep, sleep will find you. 

We’re a tangle of body parts and raw, leftover emotion. My eyes feel heavy and drained, and my cheeks feel crusty and sticky with the tracks left by the tears. Dan’s face is buried in my neck, and I forgot that he doesn’t sleep. He was there all night.

I drape my arm over his waist, and he lifts his head, his hand traveling to my face.

“We should go,” I say.

His lips press against mine for a second. “Yes,” he agrees. His voice is tired, like this is taking more from him than he’s getting back. “How long will it take for you to pack?”

“Not long.” There’s little I own right now that wouldn’t bring me to a bad place. “At all.”

He nods. Kisses me again. Runs his thumb over my cheek.

“I love you,” I tell him.

A smile. “I love you, too.”

 

xxx

 

We walk into the building like it’s a funeral service. Funeral. I’ve decided not to go. I feel too guilty.

I haven’t really talked to Dan about that anymore. I know that no matter what he’s going to insist that none of it is my fault. That will lead to an argument, and that will lead to more stress, and I don’t either of us would appreciate any more stress right now.

My things are gathered in a drawstring bag I used to use to carry virtually the same stuff on trips to the hospital I knew were going to be more than one day. I’ve got most of my clothes, my medicine, my phone. I brought my skeleton with me. Everything else I left behind with the ghost of my old life.

The building is an old building. I don’t need to have any architectural knowledge to know that much. Everything about the neighborhood was old, too. The shops, the people, the cars. An old Mastiff barked at Dan to the point where its apologetic owner had to yank it away from him.

It was a quiet building, which Dan commented that he thought I would like that, and I certainly did. I’ve always liked the quiet, but I think until now I took it for granted. I was lucky that they had just installed a lift. Dan’s flat is on the fifth floor.

I wasn’t going to interfere with my health. I don’t think I’ve even coughed today. We enter the lift, and we’re the only ones in. We don’t speak the way up, but we’ve finally reached the comfortable silence milestone of our relationship. It’s like we know what the other is thinking and we don’t spend time fretting about it.

“I had to get another key made,” Dan says when the doors slide open, and he jingles the apparently new key. I decide not to ask why he had a feeling we’d end up here. Part of me did, too.

We walk down the hall, and he tells me to stay back while he opened the door. “Dust,” he explains. That’s all it takes. I take several steps even further back. I can see the dust particles swirl in the air when it swings open, and the sight of it makes my throat want to tickle.

Dan swats at the air and steps inside for a few seconds before leaning his head outside of the door. “You can come in. But be careful still. I’ll dust next time you’re out.”

I stop at the threshold. “Have you… changed anything since the 20s?”

I look at him, in tight black jeans and a sweater with a undeniably cute but probably in poor taste ghost on it, and I have to remind myself that he actually does fit here, with the dark red walls and ornate fireplace and chandeliers.

“Well. No. I haven’t been here since the 20s.”

“And no one’s noticed that there are pieces of history behind this door?”

“They haven’t noticed Death owns it, either. I don’t understand the perks I get, I only accept them.”

Cautiously, I take a step inside. I’m afraid that touching anything will cause it to turn to dust. It’s like being trapped in a museum exhibit. My hands tighten on the bag as if to keep them from breaking something.

“It just seems like a plot hole,” I say.

Dan shrugs, sitting on the ancient couch like it’s not an ancient couch. He pulls his feet beside him. His feet are on the couch, and it makes my stomach twist. “I like to think of myself as a personified plot hole.”

“But you’re already personified death, you can’t also be a plot hole.”

“It’s a plot hole,” he uses as an excuse, pointing his finger.

“That didn’t even make sense, that’s not what a plot hole is.”

He laughs, and I almost give a complete smile. I feel a new wave of guilt that everything for a second felt normal.

When Dan notices my smile faltering and transforming into something darker, he scoots over and pats beside him. “Come on,” he says.

I can’t move. Even the floor is old. Any movement is going to send me plummeting five floors, and that’s going to be something to explain on a police report. But one step doesn’t do anything, so I take another. And another. And a few more. Then I’m there at the couch.

“Am I even allowed to sit here? It looks like it’s from  _ Titanic. _ ”

But I sit regardless. He grins and lifts his hands. “And no one even had to get naked!”

It’s uncomfortable. I don’t mention it. “I can’t draw anyway.”

Dan puts an arm around me, and I draw him in closer. “I’m going to revamp this place, if we’re going to be here for a while. And if cops are going to be here, definitely. The living room, at least. If you think this is  _ Titanic,  _ wait until you see the bedroom.”

“Sounds like an invitation.”

He grins again, and seeing it is like coming home from a long trip. “You’re the one who took it that way.”

I lean into his touch, and he swings his legs over mine. “I missed you,” I say suddenly, my forehead pressed against his.

Dan blinks. “I didn’t go anywhere.”

“I know. But. I missed you.”

We kiss deeply and thoroughly, the first one to last longer than a second in days. “I missed you, too.”


End file.
